THE 


OPEN  QUESTION 

A    Tale   of  Two   Temperaments 


By 
ELIZABETH  ROBINS 

(C.  E.  Raimond) 

AUTHOR  OF 

GEORGE  MANDEVILLE'S  HUSBAND 


HARPER     &     BROTHERS     PUBLISHERS 

NEW     YORK     AND     LONDON 

1899 


Copyright,  1898,  by  HARPER  &  BROTHERS. 

All  riglU  rtitmd. 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 


297253 


THE  OPEN  QUESTION 


CHAPTER   I 

IT  is  not  always  easy  to  trace  the  origin  of  an  American 
family,  even  when  the  immediate  progenitor  did  not  begin 
life  as  a  boot-black  or  a  prospector,  without  so  much  as  a 
"grub  stake."  The  Ganos  had  been  people  of  some  edu 
cation  and  some  means  —  clergymen,  merchants  going  to 
and  from  the  West  Indies,  or  home-keeping  planters  in  the 
South — for  the  little  space  of  a  hundred  years  before  the 
Civil  War.  Further  back  than  that— darkness. 

Whether  the  name  was  of  Huguenot,  Flemish,  Italian, 
or  other  origin,  the  Ganos  themselves,  like  thousands  of 
families  of  consequence  in  America,  never  pretended  to 
know.  Only  one  of  the  race  ever  evinced  the  least  dispo 
sition  to  care. 

In  the  family  mind,  to  be  born  a  Gano  was  of  itself  so 
shining  an  achievement  as  almost  to  constitute  an  unfair 
advantage  over  the  rest  of  mankind.  The  name  (which 
was  rigidly  accented  on  the  final  syllable)  was  held  to  con 
fer  a  distinction  peculiar  and  sufficient,  difficult  as  it  may 
be  for  the  inhabitants  of  a  larger  world  to  realize  on  what 
the  illusion  lived.  The  Ganos  had  never  been  enormously 
rich  ;  they  had  never  done  anything  of  national  or  even  of 
municipal  importance,  unless  founding  a  religious  paper 
and  endowing  a  theological  seminary  to  spread  a  faith 
which  they  themselves  speedily  abandoned  —  unless  these 
modest  achievements  might  be  construed  as  taking  some 


T  I !  E    p*p E'N    QUESTION 

sort.-fef  •  ijuetest  in  public  concerns.  They  held  themselves 
aloof  "from  'politics,  and  religiously  minded  their  own  af 
fairs.  The  oddest  thing,  perhaps,  about  their  naive  ven 
eration  for  the  house  of  Gano  was  that  so  many  of  their 
neighbors  shared  it.  Generation  after  generation,  it  im 
posed  itself  upon  the  community  they  lived  in.  To  be  able 
to  say  of  a  vexed  question,  "  Gano  agrees  with  me,"  was  to 
turn  the  scale  at  once  in  the  speaker's  favor.  A  stranger 
would  be  told,  "Smith  married  a  Gano,  you  see,"  as 
though  that  single  phrase  established  Smith's  claims  on 
your  consideration. 

The  usual  American  fashion  of  that  time  of  giving  double 
or  treble  names  was  not  followed  in  the  christening  of  the 
daughters  of  Gano,  so  that  after  marriage  each  girl  might 
retain  her  patronymic,  writing  it  after  her  Christian  name 
and  before  her  husband's.  The  eldest  son  of  every  daugh 
ter  was  called  Gano,  and  Gano  was  given  to  each  succeed 
ing  child  for  a  middle  name.  This  had  been  going  on  for 
some  time,  and  yet  neither  Maryland  nor  any  more  favored 
spot  was  populous  with  Ganos.  They  had  not  been  a  pro 
lific  race,  and  but  a  single  mesalliance  was  set  down  to  their 
discredit.  A  Gano  had  once  married  a  New  England 
school-mistress  with  a  turn  for  preaching.  This  unpopular 
lady's  offspring,  John  Gano — the  only  son  of  an  only  son— 
died  eleven  years  before  the  Civil  War,  leaving  a  widow, 
two  sons,  and  a  daughter.  These  three  survivors  in  the 
direct  line  of  male  descent,  Ethan,  John,  and  Valeria,  were 
unmistakably  delicate  children.  The  neighbors  had  doubts 
if  their  mother  would  rear  them. 

The  widow,  "one  of  the  Calverts  of  Baltimore,"  held  to 
be  a  very  retiring  and  religious  person,  soon  discovered  a 
force  of  character  and  an  energy  not  too  common  among 
women  of  her  class  in  the  slave-holding  South.  She  man 
aged  her  husband's  estate  and  the  education  of  her  chil 
dren  with  ability  and  judgment,  albeit  arbitrarily  enough, 
save  in  matters  of  religion. 

Was  it  a  breath  wafted  across  the  years  of  that  old  pas 
sion  for  religious  liberty  that  had  carried  her  ancestors 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

over  perilous  seas — an  echo  of  the  Eve  of  St.  Bartholo 
mew,  or  of  some  Lollard  wrong — that  made  so  strangely 
tolerant  this  autocratic  woman,  turned  Baptist  in  her  stren 
uous  youth,  inclining  now,  through  throes  of  spirit  incom 
municable,  to  the  Episcopacy  her  dead  husband  had  aban 
doned  ? 

The  element  of  the  grotesque  in  this  battering  in  suc 
cession  at  the  different  doors  of  heaven  is  more  apparent 
to  those  never  storm -tossed  souls  that  venture  not  from 
the  haven,  so  content  with  being  spiritually  becalmed  that 
striving  after  truth  and  faring  far  in  pursuit  of  it  seem 
childish  and  ignoble.  Such  people  smile  at  Newman,  and 
think  themselves  magnanimous  if  they  accept  his  "Apol 
ogy."  Mrs.  Gano  had  gone  unflinchingly  through  those 
seasons  of  spiritual  stress,  common  enough  among  the 
thoughtful  of  that  time,  and  so  difficult  for  some  of  us 
to-day  even  to  imagine.  In  spite  of  her  strong  self-control 
and  her  great  practical  common -sense,  her  passionately 
religious  nature  had  hurried  her  headlong  through  one 
doctrinal  crisis  after  another.  Her  youth  and  early  matu 
rity  had  been  one  wide  spiritual  battle-field.  Not  that  a 
moment  of  unbelief  in  revealed  religion  ever  troubled  her, 
but  questions  of  the  true  interpretation,  questions  of  dogma 
and  of  form,  that  might  as  well  have  been  questions  of  life 
and  death.  And  all  the  while,  up  and  down  the  highway 
of  her  youth,  raged  the  ancient  dragons,  renamed  Election 
and  Reprobation. 

Whether  as  a  result  of  enlightenment,  brought  her  by 
her  own  honest  seeking,  or  a  tradition  in  the  blood,  com 
pelling  her  to  give  as  well  as  to  demand  perfect  liberty  of 
conscience  in  the  affairs  of  faith,  this  imperious  mother 
let  her  tyrannously  tended  young  brood  wander  whither 
they  would  along  the  by-ways  of  religious  experience.  To 
look  back  a  moment  upon  the  infantine  struggles  of  these 
young  crusaders  in  the  Holy  War  is  to  realize  afresh  how 
far  the  race  has  travelled  since  that  day.  These  mere 
children,  with  their  fear  of  hell  and  of  damnation,  their 
"  changes  of  heart/'  conversions,  and  pathetic  joy  at  be- 

3 


TIIK    OPEN    QUESTION 

ing  "  saved/'  had  for  their  vividest  remembrance  of  their 
father  the  abiding  vision  of  his  kneeling  down  with  them 
in  the  great  dim  parlor  at  Ashlands,  praying,  with  hands 
uplifted  and  with  tears,  that  these  "little  ones"  might  not 
be  lost  forever. 

No  one  ever  knew  how  much  hold  these  religions  ec 
stasies  had  taken  upon  Ethan.  But  John  was  violently 
wrought  upon  ;  and  most  impressed  of  all  was  the  small 
but  preternaturally  precocious  Valeria.  At  a  time  when 
she  should  have  been  romping  in  the  open  air  or  reading 
fairy-tales  in  a  corner  she  was  living  through  days  of 
agonized  doubt  on  the  subject  of  her  soul's  salvation,  and 
crying  softly  in  the  night  to  think  of  that  outer  darkness 
into  which  unbelievers  were  certain  to  be  cast — a  darkness 
lit  only  by  lurid  flames  from  "the  lake  that  burneth  for 
ever  and  ever." 

Little  John  had  gone  through  a  varied  and,  on  the 
whole,  triumphant  spiritual  experience  by  the  time  he  was 
ten.  At  that  ripe  age  he  was  baptized  by  immersion  on 
public  confession  of  faith.  His  mother,  having  now  ma- 
turer  views  on  the  subject,  was  not  among  the  group  at 
the  river-side ;  but  she  made  no  effort  to  divert  the  boy's 
enthusiasm  from  a  form  of  belief  that  for  her. was  losing  its 
significance.  She  would  sit  on  the  long  white  veranda  in 
those  first  months  of  her  widowhood  re-reading  D'Aubigne 
and  Bishop  Spalding's  History  of  the  Proteatant  Information, 
sandwiching  Wesley  with  patristic  writings,  balancing  Arian 
against  Socinian,  and  drawing  conclusions  of  her  own,  while 
her  eldest  boy  was  writing  hymns  to  Apollo  instead  of  con 
struing  his  Caesar,  and  John,  the  centre  of  an  admiring 
crowd  down  by  the  river,  was  being  dipped  instead  of  be 
ing  sprinkled,  which  it  presently  appeared  was  the  only 
true  and  orthodox  way. 

If  some  of  the  Ganos  had  of  late  been  mightily  earnest  in 
their  religious  experiences,  they  had  long  been  "musical" 
in  a  pottering  kind  of  way.  They  would  have  assured  you 
more  than  half  seriously  that  music  was  a  "pottering" 
pursuit — a  pastime  for  boating-parties  on  the  Potomac  or 

4 


T  H  E    0 r  E  N    Q  U  E  S  T  1  U  N 

rainy  evenings  at  home,  not  for  a  moment  to  be  regarded 
as  a  profession,  except  for  long-haired  foreigners.  Mrs. 
John,  or,  as  she  now  called  herself,  "  Mrs.  Sarah  C.  Gano," 
accepted  this  point  of  view  cheerfully  enough,  as  she  had 
not  a  note  of  music  in  her.  Her  children's  passion  for 
singing  and  playing  came  early  under  the  head  of  "noise," 
and  under  the  ban  of  her  displeasure. 

Therefore,  when  it  was  discovered  that  the  eldest  boy 
had  done  badly  in  his  third  year  at  Dr.  Baylis's  Academy 
for  Young  Gentlemen,  and  that  Dr.  Baylis  accounted  for 
his  pet  pupil's  falling  off  by  saying  the  boy  played  the 
piano,  and  even  wrote  music,  when  he  should  have  been 
doing  mathematics,  great  was  the  mother's  disappointment 
in  her  son,  and  renewed  objection  to  the  Art  Divine. 
Ethan  came  home  for  his  holidays  in  disgrace.  It  was 
significant  of  the  mastery  Mrs.  Gano  had  obtained  over 
her  not  unspirited  children  that,  without  being  formally 
forbidden  to  play  at  home,  Ethan  never  dared  touch  the 
piano  the  whole  vacation  through.  It  was  this  privation, 
he  used  to  say  later  on,  that  drove  him  into  the  Church. 
He  had  got  beyond  the  banjo  and  singing  with  the  blacks 
down  in  the  negro  quarter.  He  longed  for  the  coming  of 
that  day  in  the  week  when  he  might  hear  the  sound  of  the 
organ,  and  even  such  a  choir  as  they  had  at  St.  Peter's 
Episcopal  Church  in  Catawbaville,  where,  the  Baptist  phase 
having  been  painfully  passed,  the  entire  family  now  went 
to  church  twice  every  Sunday,  rain  or  shine.  Ethan  made 
friends  with  the  rector,  and  whether  out  of  gratitude  for 
the  Rev.  Mr.  Searle's  permission  to  practise  in  the  church, 
or  from  the  reflection  that  Holy  Orders  presented  a  means 
of  combining  a  livelihood  with  an  organ,  the  upshot  was 
that  Ethan  presently  became  a  student  of  Divinity. 

At  the  beginning  of  his  last  year  at  the  Theological 
School  at  Baltimore,  he  fell  in  love  with  a  pretty  Boston 
girl  who  had  come  South  on  a  visit  to  a  school  friend. 
For  the  first  time  in  his  life  flatly  disobeying  his  mother's 
wishes,  he  married  the  little  lady  forthwith.  Under  con 
ditions  of  great  privation,  they  took  up  life  in  Baltimore 

5 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

till  Ethan  should  be  ordained.  Ten  months  afterwards 
a  son  opened  his  eyes  upon  the  world,  and  the  girl-wife 
closed  hers  forever. 

The  passive  horror  that  falls  on  passionate  young  life  laid 
desolate  by  death,  the  hush  that  seems  to  lie  shroud-like 
on  the  world,  was  rent  and  blown  to  the  four  winds  of 
heaven  by  the  clarion  note  of  war.  In  his  bewilderment 
and  helplessness  after  his  wife's  death,  Ethan  had  allowed 
his  mother-in-law,  Mrs.  Aaron  Tallmadge,  to  take  the  baby 
home  with  her  for  a  visit  to  Boston.  A  few  weeks  before 
his  appointed  ordination,  young  Gano  joined  the  Southern 
army.  About  the  time  he  was  to  have  taken  the  vows  that 
should  make  him  a  man  of  peace  and  a  priest,  Ethan  Gano 
was  rushing  blindly  with  Kirby  Smith's  brigade  across  the 
fields  from  Manassas  Station,  among  the  first  to  break  and 
rout  the  Union  ranks  and  give  his  life  for  a  Southern  vic 
tory  in  the  battle  of  Bull  Run. 

It  was  said  in  Catawbaville  that  none  of  the  disasters 
other  Southerners  were  fearing  could  add  much  to  Mrs. 
Gano's  grief  after  the  loss  of  her  eldest  son.  She  had  been 
a  striking,  although  fragile -looking,  woman,  tall,  arrow- 
straight,  and  auburn-haired,  just  entering  on  middle  life, 
when  she  went  to  her  own  room  and  closed  the  door  behind 
her  that  day  the  despatch  came  after  Bull  Run.  A  few 
weeks  later,  when  she  came  forth  again,  it  seemed  to  her 
awe-struck  household  that  it  was  an  old  woman  who  ap 
peared  among  them,  with  stern,  blanched  face,  bowed 
shoulders,  and  abundant  hair  whitening  at  the  temples. 
But  what  her  altered  looks  called  forth  of  sympathy,  her 
reticent  manner  either  held  at  bay  or  ruthlessly  rebuffed. 
She  went  nowhere,  received  no  one.  Months  afterwards  a 
neighbor,  seeing  her  by  chance,  offered  some  conventional 
but  kindly  meant  condolence.  The  look  of  cold  surprise 
that  any  one  should  venture  to  come  near  her  grief  sealed 
up  the  fountain  of  neighborly  sympathy.  The  rumor 
going  forth  that  Mrs.  Gano  was  more  unapproachable  than 
ever  since  Ethan's  death,  her  friends  left  her  to  the  soli 
tude  she  was  rightly  understood  to  demand.  But  vain  for 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

her  to  shut  and  double-lock  the  great  white  gates  of  Ash- 
lands — the  tide  of  war  swept  on  and  in,  and  overwhelmed 
the  house. 

It  is  no  part  of  the  purpose  of  this  account  to  tell  in  de 
tail  the  old  story  of  Southern  losses,  scenes  of  impotent  in 
dignation  at  the  quartering  of  Northern  soldiers  in  Con 
federate  houses,  wanton  violence  to  property,  and  greater 
violence  still  to  the  old-fashioned  Southern  sense  of  per 
sonal  dignity.  These  were  the  commonplaces  of  the  war. 
Almost  equally  common  were  the  lamentations  in  the  negro 
quarters  when  the  word  went  forth  that  the  slaves  were  free, 
that  they  were  to  turn  their  backs  on  the  patriarchal  life 
and  get  them  out  into  the  world  to  taste  the  bitter  and  the 
sweet  of  independence. 

When  Mrs.  Gano  found  that  her  belated  private  procla 
mation  through  her  overseer,  months  after  that  of  the 
President,  had  the  inadequate  effect  of  relieving  her  of  but 
one  negro,  she  assembled  her  household  servants  and  plan 
tation  folk  round  the  long  veranda,  and  told  them  they 
were  free.  Uncle  Charlie,  as  the  accepted  mouth-piece 
of  the  Gano  niggers,  stepped  forward  and  pulled  off  his 
dilapidated  hat. 

"  We  done  yeah  somethin'  'bout  dis  'mancyperation  bef o', 
but  we  don'  gib  no  'count  to  it,  Mis'  G'no." 

"But  I  tell  you  it's  true,  and  you  must  go.  I'll  have  a 
fair  division  made  of  what's  left  in  the  quarter — of  clothes 
and  tools  and  food,  and — " 

"  Law,  ma'am,  don'  go  fur  t'  do  dat,"  said  Caesar,  the 
gardener,  grinning  cheerfully,  "  we  ain't  gwine  t'  leab 

yo'." 

"  Yes,  it  is  best  you  should,"  said  the  mistress. 

"  Bress  yo'  soul,  ma'am  " — old  Charlie  pulled  his  woolly 
white  forelock  and  bowed  low — ee  de  G'nos  hab  stood  by  us 
a  po'ful  long  time,  an'  now  we  gwine  to  stan'  by  de  G'nos 
in  dis  yer  trouble.  W^e  ain't  gwine  t'  leab  yo'  t'  de  mussy 
o'  dem  Yankees." 

"  No,  no,  nebber  w'ile  de  blessed  Lawd  sabes  po'  sinners," 
Mississippi  Maria  lifted  up  her  voice  and  eyes  and  hands. 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"The  Yankees  have  given  you  your  freedom,"  said  Mrs. 
Gano,  with  wasted  scorn. 

"  I  don'  gib'  no  'count  t'  what  de  po'  white  trash  says 
dey'll  do  fur  me,"  said  Uncle  Charlie,  loftily  ;  "I  b'longs 
t'  de  G'nos." 

"Yah,  yah,  we  b'longs  t'  de  G'nos,"  the  murmur  went 
through  the  crowd. 

"  Of  course  you  do,  by  rights,"  said  the  mistress,  with  a 
flush  of  fire.      "  But  we  can't  keep  our  rights,  it  seems. 
So  just  make  the  best  of  this  liberty,  now  you've  got  it;- 
make  the  best  of  it,  as  young  Jerry  did." 

She  waved  her  hand,  dismissing  them.  Sensation  in  the 
crowd,  and  some  whispering.  Jerry  senior  created  a  di 
version  by  pulling  himself  together  and  venturing  up  one 
of  the  long,  low  steps  of  the  veranda.  He  held  out  two 
coal-black  hands  with  pallid  palms. 

"  Don'  git  mad,  Mis'  G'no,  'count  o'  Jerry.  Jerry  been 
a  po'sort  o' chile  eber  since  de  Lawd  made  him,"  urged  his 
earthly  father,  with  a  comfortable  sense  of  having  no  re 
sponsibility  in  the  matter.  "  Jerry  been  jes'  dyin'  fo'  'bout 
a  year  fur  t'  see  dat  yaller  gal,  Liza,  yo'  sen'  to  yo'  sister 
down  Kentucky  way.  Dat's  wha'  he's  a-gwine.  Yo'  won't 
catch  no  G'no  nigger  gwine  near  de  Yankees." 

"  If  he's  been  dying  to  go  so  long,  why  didn't  he  set  off 
in  January  ?" 

"  In  Janoowerry?  Yo'only  sent  us  word  yes'day  inuwn- 
in'." 

"  Hadn't  Jerry  heard  of  Lincoln's  precious  Proclamation 
at  the  New-Year  ?" 

"Oh  ye-es,  ma'am,  he  done  yeah." 

There  was  a  moment's  pause,  and  then  the  father  pulled 
his  shambling  figure  up. 

"  Jerry  ain't  much  'count,  but  he  ain't  clean  gone  crazy. 
He  know  it  all  bery  well  fo'  de  Yankee  Pres'dent  fo'  to  say 
he  wus  free.  But  Jerry  know  he  jes'  better  hold  his  bosses 
till  he  veah  what  Mis'  G'no  got  t'  say  'bout  dat.  Jerry 
been  waitin'  roun'  since  Janoowerry  t'  yeah  wot  yo'  got  t' 

say." 

8 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"Well,  I've  told  you." 

Uncle  Charlie  stepped  forward,  pulled  old  Jerry  off  the 
step  without  ceremony,  and  said,  severely  :  "  Yo'  got  a 
heap  o'  gab,  but  yo'  better  tote  yo'self  down  to  de  gyarden 
an'  do  yo'  chores."  Then,  looking  up  at  the  mistress  : 
"  An'  'tain't  no  use,  ma'am,  fo'  yo'  t'  stan'  up  dah  on  de 
po'ch  an'  tell  us  we  all  'mancyperated,  and  yo'  don'  care 
iiuthin'  no  mo'  'bout  us.  Dar's  a  heap  o'  cotton  got  t'  be 
picked,  and  we  got  t'  pick  it."  He  turned  away  to  his 
companions  :  "  Come  'long,  yo'  lazy  black  niggers,  jes'  stir 
yo'  stumps  I" 

"No,  Charlie,  no;  the  cotton  must  rot  in  the  fields." 
Blank  astonishment  swept  over  the  dusky  crowd. 

"  Golly  !"  said  one  or  two  under  their  breath,  while  the 
others  stood  speechless,  with  mouths  open  and  round  eyes 
fixed  and  staring. 

"  Ef  yo'  thinkin'  'bout  us  bein'  'mancyperated  an'  'spect- 
in'  to  be  paid/'  began  Jerry,  while  a  ripple  of  contempt  at 
the  notion  passed  over  the  bewildered  throng,  "well,  we 
ain't  'spec tin'." 

"'You  are  expecting  to  be  fed,"  said  Mrs.  Gano,  more 
gently  than  they  were  accustomed  to  hear  their  mistress 
speak,  "and  that's  more  than  I  can  do  for  so  many  any 
longer." 

The  newly  emancipated  lifted  up  their  voices  and  wept. 

"For  Law's  sake,  don'  sen'  us  away,  Mis'  G'no  !" 

"  I  reckon  yo'  can't  git  'long  widout  me  and  Tom  no 
how." 

"  We  don'  want  nuthin'  to  eat,"  said  Mississippi  Maria, 
sobbing,  while  she  cuffed  the  onty  completely  happy  person 
present — a  youth  of  four  or  five,  who  clung  to  her  skirt  with 
one  hand,  while  with  the  other  he  clutched  a  section  of 
green  melon.  "Put  dat  down,  yo'  greedy  gump  !" — his 
grandmother  clouted  him  over  the  head  till  he,  too,  joined 
in  the  general  lamentation — "stuffin'  yo'self  wid  water- 
million  fo'  ladies." 

"We  gwine  to  wuk  hard  dis  time,  Mis'  G'no,"  said  an 
other  voice  from  out  the  general  clamor,  "  and  we  don't 

9 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

need  no  bacon.  Corn-pone  and 'lasses  is 'nough  fo' any 
nigger." 

"Fin  sorry  for  yon,  but  the  Northerners  have  not  only 
freed  yon,  they  have  crippled  us.  We  can't  aiford  to  have 
you  here  any  longer.  You  must  all  go,  except  Jerusha  and 
her  children." 

There  was  a  lull  of  incredulity,  and  then  a  steadily  rising 
storm  of  dismal  howling. 

"'Tain't  fair  !"  shrieked  old  Chloe.  "  I  done  come  yer 
fust — long  befo'  Jerusha.  Missis  !  Missis  !  I  done  come 
to  G'nos  fo'  yo'  did  yo'self." 

"  I  dassent  leab  yo',"  Jerry  persisted.  "  Massa  'd  'mos' 
'a'  killed  me  ef  he'd  ebber  thought  I'd  leab  yo'  and  little 
missy  to  dem  debbils  o'  Yankees.  'Tain't  safe,  ma'am — 
'tain't  safe." 

It  was  not  Mrs.  Gano's  way  to  show  emotion.  She 
turned  abruptly,  and  disappeared  in  the  house.  She  had 
the  well-earned  reputation  of  being  no  easy  mistress.  But 
she  had  treated  her  slaves  justly,  according  to  her  lights, 
and  this  hour  of  enforced  setting  them  adrift  was  bitter  on 
other  than  political  and  economic  grounds. 


CHAPTER  II 

AT  the  close  of  the  war  the  Ganos  were  ruined.  The 
rambling,  verandaed  house  was  sold  for  a  song  to  the  Gano- 
Lees,  and  the  question  was,  where  could  John  with  his 
delicate  health,  his  interrupted  and  insufficient  schooling, 
make  a  livelihood  ?  Where  could  Mrs.  Gano  live  most  in 
expensively,  and  with  least  annoyance  to  sensibilities  so 
outraged  by  the  issue  of  the  war  ?  Certainly  not  in  Vir 
ginia — not  anywhere  in  the  despoiled,  prostrate  South. 
Certainly  not  in  the  hated  North.  But  the  West — 

Far  off  in  the  wilds  of  one  of  the  Middle  States,  Mrs. 
Gano's  father,  William  Calvert,  had  once  held  property, 
and  in  her  early  youth  she  had  been  taken  from  Baltimore 
in  a  stage-coach  over  the  Alleghany  Mountains  to  visit  him 
during  one  of  his  long  absences  from  home  on  business  in 
connection  with  these  Western  lands.  He  had  bought  a 
queer,  grim  house  in  a  little  town  on  a  river  among  the 
Mioto  Hills,  and  made  himself  there  a  temporary  home  or 
headquarters  for  these  yearly  Western  pilgrimages.  The 
State  where  he  had  his  interests  was  the  first  one  carved 
out  of  the  great  Northwestern  Territory,  and  though  later 
on  a  much  farther  West  robbed  this  mid-America  of  its 
early  century  associations  of  adventure  and  of  danger,  it 
was  far  remoter  from  the  Atlantic  seaboard  then  than  the 
Pacific  is  to-day. 

The  house  that  Mrs.  Gano  inherited  from  her  father  had 
been  built  in  times  of  Indian  warfare  for  a  fortress  and 
ammunition  centre.  With  the  retreat  of  the  Indians  to 
the  Western  Preservation,  the  settlement's  need  of  a  fort 
was  less  than  the  need  of  a  school.  The  solid  and  spacious 
rectangular  building  of  stone  on  the  height  above  the  river 

11 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

was  turned  into  an  academy  for  boys.  A  rival  school 
sapped  its  prosperity  in  time  ;  it  declined  into  bankruptcy, 
and  came  upon  the  market.  William  Culvert  bought  it, 
made  it  into  a  dwelling-house,  ultimately  adding  a  wooden 
L,  and  establishing  his  partner's  family  there.  This  house 
in  the  small  but  growing  town  of  New  Plymouth  was  all 
that  was  left  to  his  eldest  daughter  when  his  shrunken  es 
tate  was  divided  at  his  death.  Through  former  acquaint 
ances  of  William  Calvert,  the  position  of  teller  in  the  prin 
cipal  bank  of  the  town  was  obtained  for  John  Oano  ;  and 
hither  at  the  close  of  the  war  came  Mrs.  Gano  with  her  son 
of  twenty  and  her  daughter,  Valeria,  nineteen. 

New  Plymouth  was  not  looked  upon  by  its  inhabitants 
as  at  all  beyond  the  pale  of  a  most  advanced  civilization. 
Founded  by  stout  New-Englanders,  it  was  one  of  the  oldest 
settlements  in  this  part  of  the  world.  It  had  its  churches, 
its  court-house,  its  excellent  academy  for  boys  and  its  un 
paralleled  seminary  for  young  ladies,  when  the  present 
capital  of  the  State  was  a  wild  unpeopled  plain,  crossed  by 
winding  cow-paths. 

Mrs.  Gano  soon  discovered  that  her  own  view  of  her 
exile  among  a  ruder  people,  and  to  a  narrower  and  more 
primitive  life,  was  not  likely  to  be  shared  by  her  neighbors, 
proud  of  their  New  England  origin,  and  secure  in  their 
honest  self-esteem.  This  difference  of  view  was  a  matter 
quite  unimportant  to  the  new-comer,  except  that  it  made 
it  easier  to  carry  out  her  plan  of  refraining  from  any  share 
in  the  active  life  of  the  bustling  little  community. 

"  I  am  an  invalid,"  she  gave  out ;  "  I  neither  pay  nor  re 
ceive  visits." 

She  did  not  even  go  often  to  church.  The  Rev.  Mr. 
Collins  was  "a  person  of  no  education,"  she  decided,  "and 
spoke  with  a  vile  Western  accent."  But  she  rented  a  pew, 
and  with  rigid  regularity  sent  the  children  to  sit  in  it.  Her 
children  !  As  she  called  them,  so  she  treated  them — John, 
six  feet  two,  doing  a  man's  work  in  the  world,  with  a  man's 
spirit,  and  the  tall,  grave  Valeria. 

The  girl  was  an  enigmatic  creature,  silent,  self-absorbed. 

•jo 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

shrinking  from  the  give-and-take  of  social  life.  It  was  not 
the  cross  to  her  that  it  was  to  her  more  genial  brother  that 
their  mother's  craving  for  solitude,  and  not  too  Christian 
contempt  for  her  well-meaning  neighbors,  precluded  asking 
people  to  the  house.  But  the  young  man,  after  the  young 
man's  fashion,  escaped  to  some  extent  the  tyranny  of  home 
conditions.  He  had  come  forth  from  his  juvenile  pre 
dilection  for  pious  observances.  He  had  developed  a  pas 
sion  for  natural  science,  and  yet  was  content  to  work  hard 
all  day  in  the  bank,  and  to  spend  his  free  evenings  in  a 
rapidly  acquired  circle  of  new  friends.  In  summer  there 
were  moonlight  drives  and  walks  ;  there  was  boating  on  the 
Mioto,  and  singing  songs  and  discreet  love-making  on  the 
"stoops  "  of  the  houses  of  the  prettiest  girls.  In  the  mild 
weather,  too,  sometimes  combining  a  picnic  with  the  pur 
suit  of  knowledge,  he  would  make  up  a  party  to  go  to  Black 
Hand  or  Cedar  Eock,  where  the  hills  were  rich  in  fossils, 
and  sometimes  he  would  go  farther  afield  to  find  specimens 
in  the  coal  seams  of  the  region.  In  winter  there  were 
church  sociables,  "  taffy-pulls/'  sleigh-rides,  and  skating- 
parties.  He  was,  in  short,  living  an  active  and  healthy  life 
under  conditions  not  intrinsically  inspiring,  perhaps,  ex 
cept  to  the  inner  vision  of  ardent  youth. 

His  mother  offered  no  objection  to  his  amusing  himself 
in  New  Plymouth's  somewhat  crude  society,  but  took  quick 
alarm  at  a  piece  of  chance  gossip  repeated  by  the  privileged 
factotum,  Aunt  Jerusha. 

"  Massa  John  done  got  a  reel  truly-truly  sweetheart  dis 
time.  He'll  be  marry  in'  her  berry  soon,  by  all  'counts." 

It  came  out  that  the  lady  in  question  was  Miss  Hattie 
Fox.  Who  tvas  Miss  Hattie  Fox  ?  Valeria  had  seen  her  at 
church.  She  was  very  pretty,  and  her  father  was  senior 
warden  at  St.  Thomas's  on  Sundays,  and  attorney-at-law  at 
114  Main  Street  on  week-days.  To  Mrs.  Gano's  evident 
annoyance,  nothing  obviously  objectionable  could  be  urged 
against  the  girl.  The  next  Sunday,  Mrs.  Gano  went  to 
church.  Corning  out,  the  impulsive  John  went  forward, 
and  had  a  precious  whispered  word  with  the  lady  in  ques- 

13 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

tion.     As   the   young   people  reached  the  bottom  of  the 
church  steps,  his  mother  touched  him  on  the  shoulder. 

"Introduce  Miss  Fox  to  me,"  she  said. 

John  performed  the  ceremony  with  the  air  of  one  who 
lights  a  powder-train,  and  against  all  canons  of  prudence 
stands  waiting  to  see  the  explosion.  But,  behold  !  his 
mother  was  most  gracious. 

"  Your  family  have  been  very  hospitable  to  my  son,"  she 
said.  "  I  am  an  invalid,  and  do  not  entertain,  but  if  you 
will  come  to  supper  some  evening,  my  daughter  and  I  will 
be  glad  to  see  you.  Could  you  come  to-night  ?" 

'•'  Oh  yes ;  do  come,"  urged  the  smiling  and  unwary 
John. 

She  came.  She  was  certainly  a  beautiful  and  amiable 
creature,  but  nevertheless  John  found  himself  fighting 
valiantly  against  the  sudden  temptation  to  judge  her  by  a 
brand-new  standard.  His  mother's  soft  Southern  voice 
made  Hattie's  Western  burr  sound  curiously  common,  and 
the  manners  he  had  thought  delightfully  vivacious  seemed 
boisterous  on  a  sudden.  As  he  listened  through  his 
mother's  ears,  it  dawned  upon  him  for  the  first  time  that 
the  girl  laughed  too  loudly  and  too  constantly.  He  set  his 
acute  discomfort  down  to  his  humiliating  lack  of  discern 
ment  in  the  past,  and  too  easy  conquest  by  mere  good  looks, 
lie  did  not  realize  that  Hattie's  gaucheries  were  intensified 
by  her  nervous  atfe  of  Mrs.  Gano.  She  had  never  known 
any  one  in  the  least  like  her  hostess,  and  so  far  from  failing 
in  respect,  she  was  so  deeply  impressed  that  in  her  wonder 
and  veneration  she  was  driven  to  adopt  the  juvenile  device* 
for  the  working  off  of  oppressive  emotion — pretending  to 
be  extravagantly  at  her  ease. 

One  or  two  tilings  in  that  evening  of  disillusionment 
stood  out  with  painful  distinctness  in  John  Gano's  memory 
for  years.  Naturally,  Hattie  answered  "  Yes  "  and  "  No  " 
to  John's  mother,  not  as  Southern  youths  said  to  their 
elders  :  "  Yes,  ma'am,''  and  "  No,  ma'am,"  or  "  Sir."  But 
she  also  sat  down  to  the  piano  without  being  invited,  and 
sang  a  song  which  it  was  plain  Mrs.  Gano  thought  unre- 

14 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

fined.     Even  John  realized  now  that  it  wasn't  quite  the 
song  he  had  imagined. 

At  supper,  when  Mrs.  Gano's  covert  but  unsparing  in 
spection  of  the  girl  announced  to  her  children,  plain  as 
words,  that  their  visitor  was  overloaded  with  jewelry, 
John  thought  to  mitigate  the  enormity  of  the  huge  frying- 
pan  locket  Hattie  wore  on  her  innocent  breast  by  ob 
serving  : 

"Haven't  I  heard  your  sister  say  you  have  a  daguerro- 
type  of  your  father  in  the  locket  you're  wearing  ?" 

"Eight  you  are  !"  she  said.  "I  never  go  without  it." 
Then  to  Mrs.  Gano  :  Si  My  !  I'm  awful  fawnd  of  my  paw. 
P'raps  you'd  like  to  see  him." 

Miss  Fox  obligingly  unfastened  the  frying-pan,  and  shied 
it,  quoit-like,  down  the  table  to  her  hostess. 

There  was  a  pause,  a  hideous  silence. 

"  Pass  me  the  crackers,  Venus,"  Mrs.  Gano  said,  presently, 
to  Aunt  Jerusha's  daughter.  As  she  took  the  plate  she, 
without  touching  it,  indicated  the  big  bold  locket.  "  Take 
that  to  Miss  Fox,"  she  said. 

And  while  the  maid  was  conveying  the  visitor's  property 
back  to  her  in  the  middle  of  a  large  tray,  Mrs.  Gano  had 
turned  to  Valeria  and  was  speaking  of  the  morning's  ser 
mon. 

Poor  Miss  Hattie  put  the  finishing  touch  to  her  visit  by 
departing  without  taking  leave  of  her  hostess. 

"  Won't  you  come  to  the  parlor  a  moment  and  say  good 
bye  to  my  mother  ?"  said  John,  when  Valeria  brought  their 
guest  down  -  stairs  into  the  hall,  hatted  and  gloved,  and 
ready  to  go  home. 

"  Gracious  Peter  !  say  good-bye  ?"  The  guest  drew  back 
in  genuine  alarm.  "You  may  just  bet  I  won't  say  'beans  ' 
before  her  from  now  till  Gabriel  blows  his  trumpet  in  the 
morning.  Did  you  hear  the  last  thing  she  said  to  me  ? 
My!" 

"  No  ;  I  was  playing  ' Dixie  Land.'* 

"  Yes  ;  and  all  through  it  she  kept  looking  at  the  clock, 
and  when  you  got  to  the  loud  part  she  leaned  over  and 

15 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

asked  me  whether  I  expected  my  father  or  a  servant  to  come 
for  me  ?  My  gracious  !" 

"Oh,  but  I — I — "  stammered  John. 

"  You — you?  Not  a  bit  of  it.  She  said  Jerusha  should 
see  me  to  my  door.  The  old  hag's  out  at  the  gate  now 
waiting  for  me.  Oh  my  !" 

And  Miss  Fox  fled  the  premises. 

No  word  ever  passed  between  mother  and  son  about  the 
young  lady.  It  was  wholly  unnecessary  to  discuss  her. 
John  had  been  made  to  see,  in  a  ruthless  light,  the  un 
seemliness  of  asking  this  raw  little  Westerner  to  be  his 
mother's  successor  in  the  house  of  Gano,  even  in  these  de 
generate  days. 

John's  disappointment  had  no  tragic  issue,  yet,  in  spite 
of  the  consolation  of  other  friends,  in  spite  of  the  joys  of 
experimental  science  in  the  freedom  of  the  woodshed,  he 
was  grievously  unhappy  for  a  time,  especially  on  Saturday 
evenings,  which  he  had  been  used  to  spend  at  the  Foxes'. 
Partly  in  order  to  have  an  excuse  for  breaking  through 
that  custom,  and  partly  for  a  belated  doctrinal  reason,  he 
occupied  his  Saturday  evenings  in  taking  Hebrew  lessons 
from  the  Principal  of  the  Boys'  Academy.  Young  Gano 
had  the  inquirer's  temper,  and  if  he  had  not  had  his  bread 
to  win,  he  would  probably  have  been  a  traveller  along 
many  of  the  roads  of  learning. 

And  Valeria  —  she  had  not  been  as  successful  as  her 
brother  in  shaking  off  the  paralyzing  fears  and  lulling 
hopes  of  the  old  religious  view.  But  a  new  passion  had 
found  its  way  into  her  secluded  life,  altering,  shaping,  im 
periously  governing  it.  It  was  no  sudden  love  for  the  hero 
of  a  girlish  dream,  no  dedication  of  dawning  woman-life 
to  the  worship  of  some  man,  made  saint  or  savior  by 
imagination's  magic,  no  fairy  prince's  coming,  no  Romeo 
calling  under  her  balcony  in  the  night,  that  wakened  this 
grave-eyed  dreamer  of  dreams  to  a  thrilling  sense  of  life  and 
service.  It  was  that  most  blessed  or  accursed  summons 
to  rise  and  join  the  ranks  of  those  who  follow  Art.  Here 
in  the  Western  wilds,  among  conditions  grotesquely  uupro- 

16 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

pitious,  barren  beyond  the  telling,  sordid,  if  you  like,  this 
keen  young  vision,  searching  the  horizon  of  a  pent-up  life, 
had  seen  the  signal  from  afar,  shining  and  beckoning  her  on. 

Valeria  at  nineteen  was  lamely,  impotently  following 
that  Will-o'-the-wisp  which,  under  fairest  conditions,  may 
"  lead  to  bewilder  and  dazzle  to  blind,"  and  of  which  you 
shall  say  in  vain,  "He  lights  you  to  the  swamps  of  death." 
The  happy  followers  know  the  swamps  of  death  are  wait 
ing  all,  but  many  there  be  who  travel  thither  without  the 
kind-deceiving  light. 

Valeria,  in  common  with  some  other  members  of  her 
family,  had  written  little  verses,  chiefly  religious  ;  but  that 
was  nothing.  It  had  been  said  long  ago  in  Maryland  that 
the  Granos  were  born  with  a  pen  in  their  hands.  Like  the 
others,  she  had  given  some  of  her  time  to  music,  when 
her  mother  was  out  of  ear-shot.  She  had  a  smattering  of 
French,  a  modicum  of  German,  and  a  few  lessons  in  paint 
ing.  In  the  home  in  New  Plymouth  there  were  specimens 
here  and  there  about  the  house  of  work  done  before  she 
left  Maryland :  a  Melanchthon  with  a  coppery  face  and  a 
glimpse  of  hair-shirt,  two  copies  of  the  portrait  of  Raphael 
done  by  himself,  a  "Beatrice  Cenci,"  and  a  "  Holy  Family." 
But  from  the  days  of  inarticulate  childhood,  with  no  more 
than  a  handful  of  her  native  soil  and  a  watering-pot,  or  a 
precious  lump  of  putty  from  the  plantation  carpenter,  she 
had  tasted  the  tyrannous  joy  of  the  creator,  fashioning 
beasts  and  men. 

And  now,  grown  up,  exiled  to  the  West,  living  in 
poverty,  and  isolated  from  all  art  save  that  in  books,  she 
said  to  herself  that  she  had  been  sent  into  the  world  to 
model  beautiful  forms,  and  express  her  restless  spirit  in 
enduring  marble. 

In  vain  she  prayed  to  be  allowed  to  go  away  and  study — 
not  to  Paris,  not  to  Borne  :  only  to  New  York.  She  had  a 
small  legacy  left  her  by  an  aunt.  The  interest  was  so 
little,  why  not  spend  the  capital  in  studying  sculpture  ? 
Her  mother,  amazed  at  the  proposal,  left  Valeria  no  mo 
ment  in  doubt  of  her  determination  to  crush  it. 

17 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

Valeria's  Aunt  Paget  was  with  them  on  a  visit  when  the 
matter  was  under  discussion.  Mrs.  Paget  was  seldom  ad 
mitted  to  family  counsels,  and  felt  herself  something  of  a 
stranger  in  her  sister's  house.  She  was  the  worldly,  the 
frivolous  member  of  her  family,  who  "dressed  in  the 
mode  "  and  "cultivated  society."  She  was  surprised  when 
on  this  occasion  the  topic  proved  too  much  of  the  "  burn 
ing"  order  to  be  smuggled  out  of  sight. 

"Study  sculpture  !  Such  a  thing  is  unheard  of  !"  ejacu 
lated  Mrs.  Paget,  making  wide  blue  eyes  at  her  elder  sister 
and  her  niece. 

"So  I  tell  Valeria,"  said  Mrs.  Gano.  "She  couldn't  go 
to  New  York  alone,  she  couldn't  live  there  without  a 
chaperon." 

"And  even  if  she  could  afford  it,  you  need  her  here. 
You  are  always  ill  nowadays." 

"It  isn't  that,"  said  Mrs.  Gano.  "I'm  thinking  of 
Valeria  herself." 

"  Of  course  ;  so  am  I.     She  ought  to  marry." 

"I  shall  never  marry !" 

Aunt  Paget  smiled. 

"Well,  at  all  events,  it  won't  help  you  to  be  chiselling 
marble." 

"Help  me  to  what?" 

"To  a  suitable  marriage,  of  course." 

Valeria's  dark  eyes  flashed,  but  before  she  could  speak 
her  mother  said  : 

"  I  am  not  one  of  those  women  who  are  anxious  for 
their  children  to  marry.  I  shall  be  more  than  content 
if  Valeria  remains  single." 

"  Well,  Sarah,  forgive  me,  but  I  think  it's  a  mistake.  I 
said  so  before  we  left  Maryland,  when  she  refused  young 
Middleton.  Every  one  of  us  was  married  before  we  were 
Valeria's  age,  and  none  of  us  ever  dreamed  of  wanting  to 
go  away  from  our  home  and  study  sculpture,  or  do  any- 
tinny  in  the  least  unladylike." 

Valeria  gathered  up  her  sewing  as  if  to  leave  the  room. 

"You  must  admit,"  Aunt  Paget  went  on,  "there's 

18 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

something  unfeminine  about  sculpture.     I'm  not  sure  it 
isn't  even  a  little  irreligious." 

"  You  don't  know  anything  about  it,  Maria.  You  never 
had  the  least  taste  yourself  for  anything  but  dress  and 
going  out." 

"Well,  you  see,  that's  what  makes  it  so  surprising,"  said 
the  younger  sister,  in  an  apologetic  tone.  "You  have 
always  thought  me  so  frivolous,  and  yet  I  wouldn't  think — 
no,  not  in  my  wildest  moments — of  being  a  sculptor." 

As  Valeria  left  the  room,  Mrs.  Gano  looked  with  pride 
after  the  tall,  willowy  figure. 

"You  must  remember,"  she  said,  speaking  unusually 
gently,  "the  Ganos  are  more  artistic  than  we  Calverts. 
Valeria  has  great  talents.'' 

But  having  talent  altered  little.  Valeria  beat  her  wings 
against  the  walls  of  the  old  Indian  fortress  all  in  vain. 
But  she  studied  books,  she  got  clay  for  modelling,  and 
tools,  and  in  secret  wrought  rude  images  that  mocked  her 
dreams.  By-and-by  she  flung  the  tools  aside,  and  the 
plastic  clay  that  she  had  meant  to  fashion  into  forms  of 
beauty  hardened  uncouthly  into  an  unmeaning  mass.  An 
interim  of  aimlessness  and  despair  of  life  was  followed  by  a 
gradual  healing  of  the  spirit  and  restored  activity  of  mind, 
through  nothing  more  nor  less  than  the  power  of  poetry. 
Saturated  with  Keats  and  Shelley,  she  took  up  again  her 
old  childish  habit  of  verse-making,  but  very  seriously  now, 
thinking  of  herself  as  a  poet.  Some  hint  of  the  way  she 
passed  her  time,  some  whisper,  through  servants  or  others, 
of  the  reams  of  paper  she  engrossed  with  verse,  got  abroad 
in  the  town.  She  was  asked  to  contribute  to  the  Mioto 
Gazette,  and  was  stopped  on  her  way  from  church,  by  peo 
ple  she  scarcely  knew,  to  hear  that  her  fellow-townsmen 
were  full  of  curiosity  and  pride  at  having  a  poet  among 
them.  She  was  embarrassed,  but  not  altogether  displeased. 
Not  so  Mrs.  Gano,  whose  favorite  remark  about  the  good 
people  of  New  Plymouth  was  that  they  didn't  know  a  B 
from  a  bull's  foot.  Of  course  they  were  impressed  that 
any  one  in  this  benighted  place  should  write  verse  ! 

19 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"Just  tell  them  the  next  time  they  bother  you  that 
the  (Ian os  do  it  by  the  yard." 

It  was  very  difficult  to  impress  this  mother  of  hers,  who 
took  so  much  for  granted. 

"I  think,"  said  Valeria,  with  dignity,  laying  down  a 
volume  of  Aurora  Leigh — "I  think  I  shall  seriously  de 
vote  myself  to  literature." 

"Ah !  then  in  that  case  be  careful  you  don't  adopt  New 
Plymouth  standards." 

"I  am  not  likely  to." 

"  I  don't  know.  Nothing  is  more  difficult  than  to  avoid 
measuring  yourself  by  the  people  you  live  among.  John  is 
an  ignoramus  compared  to  his  father,  but  he  tells  me  he  is 
considered  here  a  highly  educated  person." 

"I  think,  mother,"  the  girl  said,  gravely,  "that  you'll 
protect  me  from  having  too  good  an  opinion  of  my  work." 

But  the  conversation  had  set  her  thoughts  in  a  new 
groove.  There  was  truth  in  this.  She  must  guard  against 
an  ignorant  satisfaction  in  her  poems.  She  must  have 
better  standards  of  style ;  she  must  know  what  the  masters 
taught  and  practised.  She  must  learn  to  be  more  critical 
than  even  her  critical  mother.  "The  great  teachers  of 
the  world  shall  be  my  teachers,"  she  said  to  herself,  and 
there  sprang  up  within  her  a  new  and  fiery  curiosity  about 
the  classics. 

She  asked  her  mother  to  let  the  Roman  Catholic  priest 
teach  her  Latin,  and  the  request  was  granted  with  but 
slight  demur,  as  an  alternative  to  the  pursuit  of  art  away 
from  home.  Quietly  and  doggedly  Valeria  went  on  with 
her  studies,  teaching  herself  Greek,  and  lying  long  morn 
ings  on  the  floor  in  the  Blue  Room,  getting  by  heart  the 
wit  and  wisdom  of  men  to  whom  the  existence  of  a  creature 
like  Valeria  Gano,  in  such  a  world  as  America,  would  have 
been  harder  to  grasp  than  she,  unaided,  hud  found  the 
niceties  of  the  historical  tense,  or  tolerance  for  her  masters' 
morals. 

While  the  girl  up-stairs  was  patiently  learning  letters  of 
the  pagans,  in  the  room  below  the  mother  conned  Church 

20 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

History  and  Biblical  Criticism,  searching  the  Creeds  and 
her  own  unquiet  heart  for  justification  and  for  peace. 
And  all  the  while  about  these  two  absorbed,  self-centred 
women  surged  the  turbulent  life  of  the  little  town.  Gossip 
<vas  busy  with  Mrs.  Gano  from  the  first,  albeit  her  face 
»vas  unknown  to  most  of  her  towns-people — to  nearly  all 
who  had  not  seen  her  in  her  rare  pilgrimages  to  St.  Thomas's. 
They  speculated,  too,  about  the  young  girl  who  dressed  so 
severely,  and  whom  one  couldn't  fancy  at  a  party  or  a  pic 
nic — who,  though  an  irreproachable  Episcopalian,  learned 
Latin  of  Father  O'Brien,  wrote  verses  about  heathen  gods 
and  goddesses,  if  report  spoke  true,  and  yet  sat  in  church 
on  Sunday  with  the  rapt  look  of  a  medieval  saint. 

It  was  universally  agreed  by  the  neighbors  that  John  Gano 
was  the  flower  of  the  flock.  He,  at  least,  was  an  addition 
to  New  Plymouth  society,  being  a  very  rising  as  well  as 
agreeable  person. 

There  was  more  than  one  sore  young  heart  in  the  town 
when,  in  the  following  year,  John  Gano  came  back  from  a 
visit  to  his  childhood's  home  in  the  South,  engaged  to 
marry  his  cousin  Virginia  Gano-Lee,  just  sixteen  at  the 
time.  .  His  mother,  who  had  never  ceased  to  fear  that, 
despite  her  vigilance,  he  might  be  beguiled  intermarrying 
some  one  of  these  "  ill-mannered  Western  girls,"  hailed  the 
idea  of  further  alliance  with  the  Gano-Lees.  However, 
much  too  big  as  her  house  was  for  her  own  use,  she  did 
not  welcome  John's  natural  proposal  to  bring  his  wife  there 
to  live. 

"  No  ;  wait  till  you  can  make  a  home  of  your  own,"  his 
mother  had  said. 

So  it  behoved  the  young  man  to  better  his  worldly  posi 
tion  as  speedily  as  possible.  An  opening  in  a  bank  in  New 
York,  with  a  little  larger  salary,  and  prospect  of  a  partner 
ship,  took  him  away  from  New  Plymouth  the  following 
year,  and  left  his  mother  and  sister  alone  in  the  old 
house. 


CHAPTER  III 

NATURALLY  so  clannish  a  woman  as  Mrs.  Gano  had  not 
let  the  years  go  by  without  much  solicitude  on  behalf  of 
her  orphan  grandchild.  After  the  death  of  her  eldest  son, 
Mrs.  Gano  wrote  to  his  mother-in-law,  Mrs.  Tallmadge, 
asking  her  to  send  the  little  orphan  to  his  father's  people, 
or  else  appoint  a  time  when  Mrs.  Gano  might  come  to 
Boston  and  bring  her  grandson  home.  The  reply  came 
from  Mr.  Tallmadge,  showing  how  deeply  he  and  his  wife 
had  resented  Mrs.  Gano's  behavior  on  the  marriage  of  her 
son.  Mr.  Tallmadge  wrote  that  his  daughter  on  her  death 
bed  had  committed  the  infant  to  the  care  of  her  own 
mother,  and  that  Ethan  Gano  himself  had  sent  his  son 
North  under  the  protection  of  Mrs.  Tallmadge.  He  had 
broken  with  his  own  family,  and  held  no  communication 
with  them.  It  was  plain  what  his  wishes  were  with  refer 
ence  to  his  son.  And  the  Tallmadges  might  be  depended 
upon  to  make  good  their  right  to  the  custody  of  the  child. 
Several  spirited  letters  were  exchanged,  and  then  silence 
till  the  close  of  the  war  and  the  news  of  Mrs.  Tallmadge's 
death.  Mrs.  Gano  then  made  another  attempt  to  get  pos 
session  of  the  boy,  but  finding  his  grandfather  as  resolute 
as  ever  to  keep  him  in  Boston,  she  proposed  a  journey 
thither.  This  apparent  prompting  of  natural  affection 
could  not  decently  be  thwarted,  although  Mr.  Tallmadge 
understood  perfectly  the  suspicion  and  anxiety  as  to  the 
way  the  orphan  was  being  brought  up,  that  secured  the 
Tallmadges  the  honor  of  a  visit  from  Mrs.  Gano. 

She  declined  to  make  the  house  in  Ashburton  Place  her 
headquarters,  "  having  already,"  she  wrote,  "  engaged  an 

22 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

apartment  at  the  Tremout  House."  Mr.  Tallmadge  smiled, 
understanding  perfectly. 

But  if  he  contemplated  with  serenity  the  descent  of  Mrs. 
Gano  upon  Ashburton  Place,  not  so  his  unmarried  daughter 
and  house-keeper,  Hannah  Tallmadge.  With  nervous  mis 
giving  she  looked  forward  to  the  coming  of  this  hereditary 
foe,  who,  moreover,  had  the  blackest  designs  upon  her 
darling  Ethan.  Still,  Hannah  Tallmadge  was  a  most 
Christian  soul.  Short  of  giving  up  Ethan,  she  would  do 
all  in  her  power  to  exhibit  a  hospitable  and  forgiving  spirit 
in  the  approaching  trial.  She  would  do  what  she  could  to 
curb  her  father's  uncompromising  bluntness  of  speech,  and 
would  keep  him  off  dangerous  topics.  It  occurred  to  her 
that  the  mere  sight  of  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  on  the  parlor 
table  might  rouse  angry  passions.  She  was  in  the  act  of 
putting  that  work  into  the  bookcase,  when  her  father,  ob 
serving  her  suspiciously,  asked  : 

"  What  are  you  doing  ?" 

"Just  putting  this  away." 

"  Leave  it  on  the  table.  It  is  the  only  work  of  fiction  I 
have  ever  been  able  to  read.  Leave  it  on  the  table." 

Nevertheless,  next  day,  in  a  moment  of  nervousness  in 
duced  by  the  news  that  a  strange  lady  was  getting  out  of  a 
carriage  at  their  door,  Miss  Hannah  dropped  Uncle  Tom 
behind  the  horse-hair  sofa-cushion. 

"  Where  is  Ethan  ?"  said  her  father,  turning  suddenly 
from  the  window. 

"  I'll  go  and  bring  him,"  replied  Miss  Hannah,  and  she 
left  the  room  with  haste. 

A  few  moments,  and  the  door  opened  again.  Mrs.  Gano 
came  in  with  an  air  that  seemed  to  Aaron  Tallmadge  sus 
piciously  gracious.  She  paused  for  just  that  decisive  but 
infinitesimal  moment  of  first  impression,  as  she  took  the 
measure  of  the  spare  figure  standing  on  guard  in  the  middle 
of  his  prim  New  England  parlor. 

"  Mr.  Tallmadge  ?"  inquired  Mrs.  Gano,  suavely. 

"  Mrs.  Gano  ?" 

lie  offered  his  hand,  and  then  pushed  a  straight-backed 

23 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

horse-hair  chair  a  little  nearer  the  fire.  In  the  mere  speak 
ing  of  her  name  his  twang  made  instant  attack  upon  the 
Southerner's  nerves.  It  passed  through  the  man's  mind 
presently  that  Mrs.  Gano's  voice  was  disagreeably  reminis 
cent  of  a  runaway  slave  he  had  once  befriended. 

"I  have  just  seen  my  grandson's  face  at  an  upper  win 
dow."  She  looked  round  eagerly.  "  Ah  !" 

The  door  had  opened  very  slowly.  One  eye  and  half  a 
little  dark  head  were  put  doubtfully  in. 

"  Come  here,  Ethan  !"  said  his  grandfather. 

The  child  disappeared  altogether. 

Mr.  Tallmadge  went  out  into  the  hall,  and  presently  re 
appeared  leading  Ethan  in.  He  hung  back,  dropping  his 
curly  head,  and  shooting  an  occasional  look  at  the  new 
comer  ;  but  since  she  did  not  fly  at  him  in  the  objectionable 
way  of  visitors,  he  allowed  himself  to  be  brought  by  de 
grees  up  to  the  strange  lady's  chair. 

She  did  not  even  say  "  How  do  you  do  ?"  She  stooped 
and  kissed  him  silently.  He  stared  at  her  with  great 
melancholy  eyes,  backed  away,  and  stood  by  his  grand 
father's  side. 

"I  am  afraid  he  is  not  strong,"  said  Mrs.  Gano,  a  little 
huskily. 

"  He  has  been  singularly  free  from  childish  ailments — 
an  occasional  cold — 

"  Of  course,  in  this  trying  climate." 

"  Oh,  we  find  our  climate  does  very  well." 

"Ko  doubt,  in  the  case  of  those  to  the  manner  born. 
This  child  is  singularly  like  his  father." 

"  He  reminds  us  constantly  of  his  mother." 

"  Is  it  possible  ?  I  assure  you  I  feel,  as  I  look  at  him,  that 
I  have  dreamed  these  twenty  years,  and  that  my  son  is  stand 
ing  there  before  me." 

"  You  don't  say!"  remarked  the  child's  grandfather,  un 
moved.  "  Everybody  here  considers  him  so  like  the  Tall 
in  ad  ges." 

Mrs.  Gano,  with  unflattering  eyes  on  the  head  of  the 
house,  gave  an  incredulous  cough.  She  seemed  on  the 

24 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

point  of  expressing  more  indubitably  some  further  thought, 
looked  at  the  boy,  softened  suddenly,  and  smiled  at  the 
grave  little  face. 

"  You  know  who  I  am  ?" 

He  shook  his  brown  curls.  A  shadow  crossed  the  wom 
an's  face. 

'•'Is  he  never  told  anything  of  his  father  or  his  father's 
people  ?" 

"He  is  very  young  yet  to  take  an  interest  in  folks  he 
hasn't  seen." 

"He  is  nearly  six." 

"  What  say  ?" 

"I  should  have  thought  an  intelligent  child  of  six  might 
have  been  told  that  his  grandmother — " 

"Not  six  yet,  madam.     Of  course,  when  he  is  older — " 

He  made  a  gesture  indicating  a  liberal  policy. 

"When  he  is  older  you  will  have  no  objection,  I  suppose, 
to  his  making  a  visit  to  his  father's  people  ?" 

"  No  objection  whatever  to  a  visit,  madam." 

"  How  soon  should  you  consider  such  a  move  expedient  ?" 

"Ah,  that  depends,"  replied  the  wary  gentleman — "de 
pends  so  much  on  circumstances." 

"  What  kind  of  circumstances  ?"  she  inquired,  stiffly. 

His  look  and  tone  said  unmistakably,  "Depends  on  your 
behavior,  madam."  "  Depends  on  the  child's  health  and— 
Run  away  and  play,  Ethan,"  he  said. 

As  the  little  boy  closed  the  door  :  "Then  you  do  admit 
he  is  delicate  ?" 

Mrs.  Gano  spoke  more  coldly  than  when  Ethan  had  been 
there  to  hear. 

"  I  admit  the  need  to  consider  the  health  of  all  children, 
and  secondary  only  to  that,  their  education." 

"What  are  your  views  as  to  Ethan's  schooling  ?" 

"I  shall  expect  him  to  go  through  the  regular  mill,  as  I 
did  :  a  good  primary  school,  then  the  preparatory  at  An- 
dover,  then  Harvard." 

The  woman  felt  a  certain  fainting  of  purpose  at  the  cut- 
and-dried  programme  presented  in  that  dry  manner  by  the 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

dry  old  man.  It  was  a  "regular  mill,"  and  who  could  tell 
if  the  sensitive,  fragile  little  Gano  was  the  stuff  to  stand 
these  machine-made  processes  ? 

"1  don't  believe,  myself/'  said  Mr.  Tallmadge,  with  de 
cision,  "in  haphazard,  shilly-shally  ways  of  raising  chil 
dren,  and  leaving  it  to  them  to  see  what  they'll  take  to." 

"  I  have  little  experience  of  shilly-shally  methods,"  re 
plied  his  visitor. 

"If  you  leave  it  to  boys  to  decide,  what  they  take  to  is 
mischief  nine  times  out  of  ten." 

"  I  think  you  may  make  your  mind  easy  about  my  grand 
son." 

Mr.  Tallmadge  looked  at  her  in  silence  for  a  moment ; 
then  suddenly  :  "Yes,  yes  ;  he'll  turn  out  all  right."  He 
nodded,  as  if  to  say,  "Trust  me  to  see  to  that !"  "  My 
experience  is,  if  you  want  a  boy  to  do  a  particular  thing, 
set  that  aim  before  him  at  the  start.  That's  the  way  I  was 
raised  ;  that's  the  way  I  propose  to  raise  my  grandson." 

There  was  a  slight  pause. 

"  And  in  what  form  of  religious  faith  ?" 

"  We  are  all  members  of  the  Presbyterian  Church."  It 
was  said  as  though  it  had  been  in  obedience  to  an  edict  of 
the  Everlasting  from  the  foundation  of  the  world.  "You 
will  appreciate  the  necessity  of  having  my  grandson  raised 
under  my  own  eye  when  I  tell  you  it  is  my  intention  that, 
after  he  gets  through  Harvard,  he  shall  succeed  to  the  ed 
itorship  of  my  paper." 

"  My  grandson  edit  an  Abolitionist  paper  ?" 

Mr.  Tallmadge  blinked  in  a  slightly  nervous  fashion,  but 
answered,  steadfastly  : 

"  Abolition  is  abolished,  madam  ;  it  has  served  its  end. 
Ethan  will  naturally  fall  heir  to  my  property  and  my  pro 
fession." 

"Ethan  is  his  father's  heir  first  of  all — heir  to  a  man 
who  gave  his  life  at  Bull  Run  for  our  rights,  not  for  the 
abolition  of  them." 

"Abolition  was  right,  and  is  law,  by  the  sanction  of  the 
God  of  battles." 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

Mrs.  Gano  rose  from  her  chair  ;  the  door  opened,  and  in 
came  Miss  Hannah.  Whether  it  was  chance,  or  whether 
she  had  been  waiting  outside  for  the  psychological  mo 
ment,  certainly  her  entrance  was  opportune.  She  went 
through  her  greeting  with  a  flustered  civility  that,  by  its 
own  extreme  nervousness,  made  the  situation  she  had  bro 
ken  in  upon  seem  calm  to  the  point  of  commonplace.  Mrs. 
Gano  found  herself  trying  to  put  Miss  Hannah  at  her  ease. 

The  tall,  thin  spinster,  with  her  smooth  gray  hair  and 
anxious  manner,  must  have  been  more  than  double  the  age 
of  Ethan's  mother. 

Supper  would  be  ready  in  twenty  minutes. 

"  Of  course."  she  said,  "you  will  stay  ?  Ethan  has  just 
been  asking  if  he  mayn't  sit  up  a  little  later  to-night/' 

"Ethan!"  Potent  conjuration!  Mrs.  Gano  had  not 
come  all  this  way  to  look  after  her  grandson's  welfare  and 
be  turned  back  by  a  fanatical  outbreak  on  the  part  of  a 
bigoted  Abolitionist.  No,  and  if  plain  speaking  was  to  be 
the  order  of  the  day,  Mr.  Tallmadge  should  not  do  it  all. 
He  had  it  his  own  way,  however,  in  the  long  grace  with 
which  he  prefaced  supper,  a  performance  that  sounded  in 
Mrs.  Gano's  ears  aggressively  Presbyterian.  It  appeared 
at  that  meal  that  Miss  Hannah  was  disposed  to  be  indul 
gent  to  her  little  nephew,  and  that  he  was  devoted  to  her. 
He  talked  very  little,  and  what  he  had  to  say  he  confided 
in  a  whisper  to  his  aunt.  But  as  he  ate,  he  stared  unceas 
ingly  with  great  gloomy  eyes  at  his  grandmother.  She 
saw  with  deep  misgiving  that  he  was  permitted  to  make  the 
same  meal  as  his  elders.  He  declined  to  share  his  aunt's 
decoction  of  "shells,"  as  she  quaintly  called  cocoa,  and 
joined  his  grandparents  in  a  large  cup  of  coffee.  He  bolted 
down  quantities  of  that  moist  and  leaden  Boston  brown 
bread  which  Mrs.  Gano  regarded  with  amazement  and 
alarm,  and  he  seemed  to  share  the  New  England  taste  for 
beans  and  bacon,  a  fare  which,  in  the  visitor's  mind,  ranked 
with  the  "hog  and  hominy"  of  the  hard-working  planta 
tion  blacks  ;  but  to  place  such  food  before  a  little  delicate 
child  ! 

27 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

After  supper  his  aunt  took  him  on  her  lap,  and,  while 
Mr.  Tallmadge  and  his  guest  skirted  dangerous  topics  with 
stately  politeness,  Miss  Tallmadge,  in  the  corner  by  the 
fire,  was  softly  repeating  nursery  rhymes  to  the  little 
Ethan.  Others  might  have  been  struck  by  the  picture  of 
the  gaunt,  childless  woman  and  her  ready  assumption  of 
the  mother  role  ;  Mrs.  Gano  was  vaguely  conscious  of  a 
kind  of  remissness  in  herself  in  having  omitted  to  tell  her 
own  children  a  word  about  little  Nannie  Etticott  or  Cock 
Robin.  In  all  her  life  of  maternal  solicitude  she  had  never 
once  mentioned  "  Hey-diddle-diddle,  the  Cat  and  the  Fid 
dle,"  or  even  hinted  at  the  existence  of  "  the  Little  Man 
who  had  a  little  gun."  Presently,  in  the  midst  of  Mr. 
Tall  mad ge'a  remarks  upon  the  beauties  of  Boston  Common, 
Mrs.  Gano  caught  the  child's  more  and  more  insistent  de 
mand  for  some  joy  which  Miss  Tallmadge  was  minded  to 
withhold.  In  spite  of  "  Sh !  sh  !"  more  and  more  shrill 
came  the  iteration  : 

"Nwingy  Tat !  Nwingy  Tat !" 

In  his  fervor  Ethan  had  dragged  the  stern,  unyielding 
horse-hair  cushion  off  the  end  of  the  sofa,  revealing  two 
volumes  hidden  behind  it. 

Mrs.  Gano  seemed  not  to  regret  this  diversion.  Helping 
the  child  to  restore  the  sofa-cushion,  she  took  up  the 
books.  As  she  read  the  title  her  look  darkened.  She  put 
the  work  down  as  if  it  burned  her  fingers. 

"  A  great,  bad  book,"  she  said. 

"  What  is  that  ?"  asked  Mr.  Tallmadge. 

Mrs.  Gano  jerked  her  head  without  answering. 

**  What  say  ?"  persisted  the  old  man,  with  his  hand  to 
his  ear. 

"  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin"  said  Miss  Tallmadge,  trying  to 
speak  lightly. 

"  A  very  uncommon  woman,  Mrs.  Stowe,"said  Mr.  Tall 
madge,  firmly;  "very  uncommon,  indeed." 

"Let  us  hope  so,"  ejaculated  Mrs.  Gano,  half  to  herself. 

"Eh?"  inquired  Mr.  Tallmadge,  with  gruff  suspicion. 
"  What  say  ?" 

28 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"I  was  granting  her  uncommonness,  and  hoping  it 
wouldn't  get  commoner." 

"  H'm  !  It  could  hardly  be  expected,  I  suppose,  that 
you  should  think  well  of— 

"No  ',  I  can't  be  expected  to  think  well  of  a  woman  who 
is  not  content  with  getting  a  whole  nation  by  the  ears,  but 
she  must  interfere  between  husband  and  wife,  and — " 

"  What  say  ?"  inquired  Mr.  Tallmadge,  with  corrugated 
brows  and  hand  to  his  deaf  ear.  "I'm  talking  about  Har 
riet  Beecher  Stowe." 

"  So  am  I/'  said  Mrs.  Gano.  "I  only  hope  she'll  be 
content  with  the  mischief  she's  done  already,  and  not  rush 
into  print  with  her  espousal  of  Lady  Byron's  wrongs." 

"I  haven't  heard  that  Mrs.  Beecher  Stowe  had  any 
such  intention.  As  a  friend  of  the  family,  from  Lyman 
down — 

"  As  a  friend  of  the  family,  you  ought  to  warn  them  in 
time  to  curb  her  propensity  for  attending  to  other  peo 
ple's  affairs.  Uncommon !  Yes,  an  uncommon  busy 
body." 

"I  think,  madam,  you  are  misinformed,"  said  Mr.  Tall 
madge,  with  dignity. 

"I  know  more  about  Harriet  Beecher  Stowe  than  most 
people — though  she  never  has  set  foot  in  the  South — and  I 
know  she's  a  busybody.  I  also  know  she  has  less  excuse 
than  some  women.  The  spring  I  spent  with  my  sister, 
Mrs.  Paget,  in  Covington,  before  I  met  the  Stowes,  I  used 
to  look  out  and  see  a  man  trudging  about  the  hills  in  front 
of  rny  windows  with  a  basket  on  his  arm.  '  Who  is  that  ?' 
I  asked.  'That's  Professor  Stowe/  they  said;  and  we  all 
wondered  what  he  had  in  the  basket.  I  said  he  was  bot 
anizing  ;  Mrs.  Paget  said  the  basket  was  too  big  for  that  : 
he  must  be  looking  for  kail,  or  dock,  or  dandelion  greens 
for  dinner.  By-and-by  we  heard  he  had  twins  in  the  bas 
ket,  and  was  taking  them  about  for  an  airing.  The  Stowes 
were  very  poor,  too,  and  what  with  that  and  twins,  Harriet 
B.  ought  to  have  found  enough  to  do  at  home." 

"Nwingy  Tat  !  Nwiiigy  Tat !" 

29 


THE     OPEN    QUESTION 

"Sh!"  said  his  aunt. 

"  Mm'  sing  it,"  answered  Ethan,  in  the  only  distinct 
words  his  grandmother  had  heard  from  his  lips. 

"  What  is  it  ?"  she  asked,  more  interested  in  Ethan's  in 
fant  tastes  than  even  in  Mrs.  Stowe's  enormities. 

"It's  that  foolish  little  rhyme,  'The  New  England 
Cat/"  replied  Miss  Hannah. 

"  I  don't  know  it,"  said  Mrs.  Gano. 

"  Ethan  likes  it  for  some  unknown  reason.  When  he 
had  scarlet-fever  last  year — 

She  stopped,  seeing  the  sudden  change  in  Mrs.  Gano's 
face. 

"  We  had  an  epidemic  of  it,"  said  Mr.  Tallmadge,  as 
though  that  fact  lessened  the  danger.  "Ethan  came  out 
of  it  famously — didn't  you,  my  little  man  ?" 

"Nwingy  Tat!"  said  Ethan. 

"Oh  yes,  he  came  out  all  right,"  said  Miss  Hannah; 
"but  before  the  crisis  I  sat  up  with  him  at  night,  and  I 
sang  'The  New  England  Cat'  to  him  till  I  nearly  died  of 
it.  Through  sheer  exhaustion  my  voice  would  get  weaker 
and  weaker,  till  it  seemed  to  die  too  natural  a  death  for 
him  to  notice.  Hut  the  moment  I  stopped  he  would  start  up 
and  say  feverishly,  'Nwingy  Tat  !'  It  was  the  only  thing 
that  quieted  him." 

Mrs.  Gano  might  have  been  supposed  to  regard  this  pas 
sion  for  New  England  cats  as  a  depraved  taste  on  the  part 
of  a  Gano,  but  she  said,  graciously  : 

"  Let  me  add  my  petition  to  Ethan's.  I  would  like  to 
hear  his  favorite  song." 

Perhaps  in  the  dim  recesses  of  her  mind  she  had  some 
formless  idea  of  learning  this  lyric. 

" It's  not  a  song,"  said  Miss  Hannah,  hurriedly.  "Come, 
child,  it's  time  you  went  to  bed." 

"Nwingy  Tat,  first,"  said  Ethan,  firmly. 

"Oh,  hum  it  for  the  child  !"  said  Mr.  Tallmadge,  im 
patiently. 

Miss  Hannah's  face  took  on  a  dull-red  hue,  but  obedi 
ently  she  began  in  a  thin,  sweet  little  voice  : 

30 


THE    GIVEN    QUESTION 

to  bring  succor  and  to  offer  service.     Daughter,  call  in  the 
candidates." 

A  young  lady  rose,  wiped  away  a  sympathetic  tear,  cross 
ed  behind  the  wooden  bar,  and  opened  a  door.  The  Presi 
dent  meanwhile  opened  a  reticule,  took  out  a  bottle  of  lav 
ender-water,  and  poured  a  few  drops  on  her  handkerchief. 
Through  the  open  door  presently  appeared  the  old  negro, 
the  little  quadroon  girl  (evidently  ill),  and  a  great  strap 
ping  mulatto  woman.  Mrs.  Gano  kept  looking  for  the  rest, 
while  the  trio  huddled  together  like  sheep  in  the  farthest 
corner,  until  "daughter"  indicated  that  benches  were  to 
be  sat  upon. 

"  Do  they  come  in  threes  ?"  Mrs.  Gano  whispered  to  Miss 
Tallmadge. 

"  This  is  all  there  are  this  time." 

The  President  opened  a  large  ledger,  dipped  and  poised 
a  pen,  and  nodded  to  "daughter."  Daughter  bent  down 
and  spoke  to  the  old  man.  He  got  up  trembling,  and  fol 
lowed  the  young  lady  out  behind  the  bar  to  the  little  open 
space  in  front  of  the  desk.  The  look  on  his  face  was  not 
the  look  negroes  commonly  wore  when  mounting  the  block 
in  Southern  slave-markets.  It  was  more  like  the  look  that 
would  come  into  their  faces  when  they  were  knocked  down 
to  some  notoriously  hard  master. 

"  What  is  your  name  ?" 

"Jake,  mehm." 

"Jake  what?" 

"  Jes'  Jake,  mehm.     F'om  Henderson's." 

"Oh,  I  have  a  letter  about  you."  She  looked  about 
among  her  papers.  "Yes,  here;  I  will  tabulate  this  and 
see  what  we  can  do  for  you.  You  may  come  to  the  next 
meeting." 

"  Yes,  mehm." 

He  hobbled  a  step  or  two  away  in  a  dazed  fashion,  when 
a  piercing  shriek  rang  across  the  room.  He  started  as  if  a 
lash  had  been  laid  across  his  back.  The  little  quadroon 
girl  was  standing  up,  holding  out  two  shaking  arms  to 
him.  The  old  man  blinked. 

35 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"I  swar  I  ain't  leabin'  yo',  Till.  1  gwine  t'  wait  by 
dedo'." 

But  the  little  girl  flew  forward,  climbing  benches  and 
creeping  under  the  bar.  She  had  nearly  reached  the  old 
man  when  the  President,  leaning  forward,  said : 

"Are  you  not  the  girl  I  sent  to  Mrs.  Parsons's  as  gen 
eral  servant  ?" 

"Yes,  mehm,"  said  the  candidate,  taking  tight  hold  of 
the  old  man's  coat. 

"  I  have  a  very  bad  account  of  you." 

"Yes,  mehm." 

"Mrs.  Tilson  says  you  are  idle  and  good  for  nothing." 

"Yes,  mehm." 

The  old  man  took  her  hand. 

"She  ain't  berry  well,  mehm,  sence  we  come  t'  Resting. 
Mebbe  she'll  be  better  able  by'm-by  t'  go  where  dere  ain't 
eleben  chillen  and  so  much  snow  ter  shubbel." 

"You  look  anything  but  strong,'"  said  the  President. 
"  Pll  try  to  find  you  an  easier  place.  They  all  want  easier 
places,"  she  said,  over  her  shoulder,  to  the  domestic  phi 
lanthropists. 

"Hush!  Hush!  I'll  tell  de  lady,  honey,  ef  yer  don' 
take  an'  cry." 

Rut  the  President  was  motioning  the  other  candidate 
forward.  The  old  man  stood  hesitating,  and  then  began 
shakily : 

"  It  'ud  be  mighty  kin',  mehm,  ef  yo'  could  get  Till  an' 
me  de  same  place." 

"  The  same  place  '."  echoed  the  President,  sharply. 

"  Y — yes,  mehm, "faltered  the  old  man,  backing  timidly; 
"or  anyways  places  close  togedder,  mehm,  please,  mehm." 

"That's  seldom  possible." 

The  little  quadroon  wept  audibly.  The  old  man  patted 
her  arm  feebly. 

•*  I — I  disremember  it  myself,  but  Till,  yere,  she  says  I 
toP  'er  down  Georgy  dat  up  yere  in  Rosting  dey  didn't 
nebber  make  de  chilluns  go  one  way  an'  de  ole  folks 
an  udder." 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  We'll  do  what  we  can/' 

"Thank  yo',  mehm." 

And  they  went  out. 

The  President  made  an  entry  in  the  ledger. 

"  The  old  grandfather  is  said  to  be  an  invaluable  hand 
at  polishing  plate/'  she  said,  with  a  sardonic  look  at  her 
fellow  philanthropists.  "Any  one  who  wishes  may  see  his 
credentials  after  the  meeting.  Daughter,,  I  called  the  next 
candidate/' 

"I  have  told  her,  ma." 

"  Come  forward  \"  commanded  the  President. 

The  big  mulatto  woman  wriggled  about,  and  then  got 
up,  frightfully  embarrassed,  and  by  dint  of  kindly  urging 
from  "daughter"  and  the  President,  she  was  finally  landed 
in  front  of  the  desk. 

"Now,"  said  the  President,  fixing  the  woman  through 
her  spectacles,  "  where  have  you  resided  ?" 

This  question  was  repeated  three  times  and  in  three 
forms. 

"  Oh,  w'ere  I  libs  ?     Up  Corn  Alley." 

"  But  before  you  lived  in  Corn  Alley,  where  did  you 
come  from  ?" 

"F'om  Jacksing's." 

"  Where  did  the  Jacksons  live  ?" 

"Ondehill." 

"  What  hill  ?" 

She  thought  deeply,  and  then  looked  up,  grinning  and 
silent. 

"  What  State  ?"  asked  the  President,  with  a  haggard 
air. 

"State?" 

"  Yes,  Georgia  or  Alabama  ?" 

"  No,  mehm.     It  was  Keziah  wus  f  om  Alabammy." 

"What  is  your  name  ?" 

"YellahSal." 

She  squirmed  with  an  elephantine  coquetry. 

"  Your  last  name  ?" 

"  Las'  ?" 

37 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

f<  Are  you  married  ?' ' 

"Huh  !     Yes,  mehm,"  she  chuckled. 

"  What  was  your  husband's  name  ?" 

"W'ichhusbin?" 

"  Have  you  been  married  more  than  once  ?" 

"Huh!  Yes,  mehm."  She  bridled  and  twisted.  "Six 
or  seben  times." 

"As  Vice-President, "  said  a  white-haired  woman,  stand 
ing  up  suddenly  near  the  desk,  "  I  suggest  that  it  would  be 
a  more  practical  investment  of  our  time  if  we  confine  our 
selves  to  finding  out  what  the  candidates  could  do." 

"Do  you  wish  me  to  register  this  woman  as  Yellow 
Sal  ?"  inquired  the  President,  severely. 

"  Put  her  down  as  Sarah  Yellow,"  advised  the  Vice- 
President,  and  resumed  her  seat. 

This  passage  seemed  to  unhinge  the  candidate.  The 
question  of  what  she  could  do  found  her  relapsed  into 
speechlessness.  Even  its  repetition  elicited  only  twistings 
and  spasmodic  grins. 

"Come,  come,"  said  the  President,  wearily.  "You  are 
a  strong,  able-bodied  woman;  you  at  least  can  do  a  good 
day's  work  at  something.  Now,  the  question  is,  what?" 

Yellow  Sal  only  moved  her  massive  shoulders  with  an  aii 
of  conscious  power. 

"  Did  you  cook  ?" 

"Cook?     No,  mehm." 

She  smiled  in  a  superior  fashion. 

"  What  then  ?" 

She  twisted  a  piece  of  her  calico  gown. 

"  Were  you  the  laundress  ?" 

"  ^fe  ?     No,  mehm.     Bet  an'  Sabina  done  de  washin'." 

"  Well,  and  you  ?    Were  you  nurse  ?" 

The  down-trodden  one  shook  her  head. 

"Nebber  could  abide  chillen." 

"Well,  what  did  you  do?" 

The  President  leaned  in  a  threatening  attitude  over  the 
desk. 

"Huh!  Me,  mehm  ?  Me — w'y,"  speaking  soothingly, 

88 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 
Lor  bress  yo7  soul,  mehm,  I  done  kep'  de  flies  off'n  ole 


Miss  Hannah's  hope  of  the  possible  good  effects  of  the 
meeting  upon  her  guest  was  more  than  justified.  Mrs. 
Gano  returned  to  Ashburton  Place  in  a  distinctly  cheerful 
frame  of  mind. 

Whether  Mr.  Tallmadge,  too,  had  begun  the  day  with 
vows  of  peace,  he  certainly  bore  himself  towards  his  un 
welcome  visitor  with  no  little  consideration  and  courtesy. 
Mrs.  Gano  was  forced  to  admit  to  herself  a  growing  respect, 
an  unwilling  admiration  even,  for  her  old  enemy.  The 
only  outward  and  visible  sign  of  this  change  of  heart  was 
made  manifest  after  the  departure  of  the  one  other  visitor 
that  evening  brought  to  Ashburton  Place.  Mr.  Tallmadge 
had  not  only  prevented  Mr.  Garrison  from  speaking  of  the 
war,  but  he  had  headed  the  conversation  off  every  time  it 
approached  any  topic  of  the  day  that  bore  upon  the  South. 
When  the  door  closed  behind  him  Mrs.  Gano  turned  to  her 
host  and  said,  formally  : 

"I  appreciate  your  desire  not  to  have  these  questions 
raised  in  my  presence;  but  I  see  that  in  one  regard  you 
misapprehend  me.  I  agree  with  your  visitor  as  to  the  un- 
desirability  of  slavery/' 

"  You,  madam  ?" 

She  bowed. 

"  My  objection  is  almost  solely  on  the  score  of  its  evil 
effects  on  the  superior  race.  Still,  slavery  was  an  institu 
tion  we  had  inherited,  and  in  which  our  social  and  indus 
trial  life  was  rooted.  One  part  of  a  free  country  had  no 
right  to  dictate  to  another  part.  The  South  would  have 
freed  her  slaves  herself  in  due  time." 

Mr.  Tallmadge  was  unable  to  repress  an  incredulous 
smile. 

"  Slaves  were  once  held  in  the  North,"  his  guest  re 
minded  him,  drawing  herself  up.  "  If  the  African  had 
been  able  to  live  in  this  terrible  climate,  New  England 
would  not  so  soon  have  seen  the  iniquity  of  slavery.  The 

39 


TIIK    01'EX    QTESTION 

South,  on  wider  grounds,  was  coining  to  the  same  conclu 
sion.  The  war  only  precipitated  with  bloodshed  and  dis 
aster  that  which,  if  left  to  right  itself,  would  have  been 
done  without  such  awful  squandering  of  blood  and  gold." 

Mr.  Tallmadge  shook  his  head. 

"I  cannot  agree  with  you,  madam.  Violent  uprooting 
is  the  only  way  to  clear  the  ground  of  certain  noxious 
growths."' 

"Ah,  you  think  you've  cleared  the  ground — by  inflict 
ing  the  duties  of  citizenship  all  in  an  instant  upon  a  bar 
barian  horde  ?  You  are  more  of  an  optimist  even  than 
your  friends." 

"What  friends  are  you  quoting  ?" 

"  Your  Harriet  Beecher  Stowe,  for  instance.  Even  in 
the  full  tide  of  her  romantic  enthusiasm  she  can  find  no 
better  use  for  the  idealized  ex-slave  than  to  ship  him  to 
Liberia.  This,  too,  after  educating  him — sending  him  for 
four  years  to  a  French  university."  She  smiled.  "But 
since  you  and  I  may  not  meet  again,  all  I  wish  to  point  out 
before  I  go  is  that  you  need  not  count  me  as  an  advocate 
of  slavery." 

She  rose. 

"  Before  you  go  ?"  he  began,  hesitating. 

"I  am  needed  at  home,"  she  said.  "I  shall  not  remain 
in  Boston  longer  than  is  necessary  to  secure  your  agree 
ment  to  Ethan's  coming  to  us  for  a  visit." 

"  I  have  already  said,  madam — 

"I  should  not  feel  the  object  of  my  journey  attained 
unless  the  date  were  fixed." 

They  stood  looking  at  each  other. 

It  will  never  be  known  how  much  Mr.  Tallmadge's  read 
iness  to  restore  Mrs.  Gano  to  the  bosom  of  her  family 
iniluenced  his  views  at  this  juncture.  He  turned  away 
and  considered,  with  one  foot  on  the  fender  and  chin- 
whisker  in  hand. 

"This  next  summer,"  he  said,  "I  have  promised  to  take 
Ethan  to  my  brother's  place  in  the  White  Mountains." 

"Then  the  summer  after  this." 

40 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 


"  Yes  ;  the  summer  after  he  could  come,  if  he  were  well/' 

"  If  he  were  ill,  I  would  come  to  see  him." 

"Ah— yes/' 

"  When  does  his  vacation  begin  ?" 

"  About  the  middle  of  June." 

"  If  he  is  well,  you  will  send  him  to  us  the  third  week  ?" 

"  Yes." 

They  shook  hands  solemnly. 


CHAPTER  IV 

IT  was  when  Ethan  was  seven  years  old  that  he  was  per 
mitted  to  go  to  New  Plymouth  to  spend  his  summer  holi 
days.  He  was  brought  by  his  uncle  Elijah  Tallmadge,  who, 
on  his  way  to  Cincinnati,  satisfied  his  sense  of  duty,  if  not 
his  civility,  by  dropping  the  little  boy  on  the  platform  of 
the  New  Plymouth  station,  and  watching  from  the  win 
dow  of  the  receding  train  how  a  tall,  grave  girl  in  an  old- 
fashioned  bonnet,  and  with  a  turbaned  negress  in  her  wake, 
went  up  to  the  little  traveller  and  greeted  him. 

"  Are  you  Ethan  Gano  ?"  said  the  lady,  gently. 

"Yes, "answered  the  child. 

She  kissed  him.  "I  am  your  aunt  Valeria,"  she  said, 
and  took  his  trunk  check  out  of  his  hand  and  gave  it  to 
the  negro  hackman,  who  departed  to  claim  the  child's  be 
longings. 

When  the  boy  had  said  he  was  Ethan  Gano,  he  was 
startled  by  an  exclamation  of  uncouth  joy  from  the  negress 
who  stood  behind  his  aunt.  Jerusha  showed  her  strong 
teeth  in  a  smile  of  wide  beneficence,  and  rolled  her  great 
bulging  eyes  till  Ethan  quaked. 

"Tooby  shoV  she  broke  out;  "didn't  I  tell  yo'  he'd 
got  de  Gaho  look  in  his  lubly  face  ?  He's  jes'  de  spi't  en 
image  ob  his  paw  ;"  and  she  held  out  her  motlierly  arms 
to  embrace  him. 

Ethan  fled,  shuddering,  not  from  fear  alone,  but  from 
that  sense,  so  much  stronger  in  the  Northern  bred  than  in 
the  Southern,  of  physical  shrinking  from  the  black.  Ethan 
held  himself  to  have  escaped  a  dire  indignity,  as  he  over 
took  his  aunt  at  the  edge  of  the  platform,  close  to  a  dilapi 
dated  carriage.  He  looked  back,  fearing  the  black  woman 

42 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

was  following,  and  might  be  coming  with  them.  But  no, 
there  she  was,  shuffling  down  a  side  street  with  her  heavy 
see-saw  hip-motion.  Ethan's  little  trunk  was  put  on  the 
box,  and  he  and  his  aunt  got  into  the  dilapidated  vehicle 
and  drove  off  with  a  rattling  and  jingling  of  loose  windows 
and  ancient  brass-mounted  harness.  Presently  they  passed 
Jerusha,  who  smiled  in  at  them  broadly,  seeming  to  bear 
no  trace  of  a  grudge.  But  Ethan  colored  and  looked  away. 

His  aunt  did  not  seem  to  be  a  talkative  person.  She  sat 
looking  out  of  the  window  almost  as  if  she  were  alone.  She 
did,  however,  point  out  the  Court-house,  and  when  they 
rumbled  and  clattered  over  the  great  wooden  bridge,  "  Now 
we  are  crossing  the  Mioto,"she  said  ;  "  we  live  on  the  other 
side.  It's  much  nicer  to  live  on  the  other  side." 

"  Oh  yes"  said  Ethan,  as  though  he  appreciated  the 
advantage  keenly. 

His  aunt  had  delicate  aquiline  features,  and  a  singularly 
beautiful  pale  skin.  He  did  not  know  it,  but  the  two  oc 
cupants  of  the  carriage  were  curiously  alike,  even  to  the 
look  of  melancholy  lurking  in  the  eyes  of  each.  Ethan 
noticed  that  the  ungloved  hand  that  lay  listless  in  her  lap 
was  very  long,  and  whiter  than  any  hand  he  had  ever  seen. 

They  suddenly  turned  off  the  main  street  leading  from 
the  bridge. 

"This  is  Washington  Street,"  said  his  aunt.  "If  you 
lean  out  you'll  see  our  house."  But  the  trees  were  too 
thick  for  one  who  didn't  know  where  to  look  to  distinguish 
the  glimpses  of  the  gray-stone  building.  In  a  moment  the 
vehicle  stopped.  "  Here  we  are,"  said  Aunt  Valeria. 

Ethan  looked  up  at  the  massive  gray  front  above  him  on 
a  terrace  only  a  little  back  from  the  street.  Ampelopsis 
trailed  over,  but  did  not  yet  hide  the  great  blocks  of  hand- 
hewn  stone  that  in  those  old  days  had  been  set  up  for  de 
fence  between  the  pale-face  and  the  Indian. 

Aunt  Valeria  opened  the  gate,  and  Ethan  followed  her 
up  the  half-dozen  stone  steps  and  along  the  brick-paved 
path  to  the  porch.  There  in  the  doorway,  between  the 
big  Doric  columns,  stood  a  tall,  slim  woman,  dressed  in 

43 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

black,  with  masses  of  silvered  hair  nearly  covered  by  a  white 
veil.  Her  face  was  furrowed,  but  she  wore  a  look  of  wel 
come  and  a  light  of  unquenched  youth  in  her  smiling  eyes 
that  made  the  child  smile  too,  feeling  himself  no  stranger, 
but  as  one  who  had  come  home.  She  set  her  hands  on 
either  side  his  face  and  kissed  him. 

"  But  where  is  Mr.  Tallmadge  ?"  Mrs.  Gano  asked  her 
daughter  when  they  were  in  the  hall. 

"  Gone  on  to  Cincinnati.  He  didn't  get  out  of  the 
train." 

"  What  ?    He  never  left  this  child  to  the  chance  of— 

Ethan  had  never  seen  any  one  look  so  angry.  The  eyes 
that  had  been  smiling  flashed  a  steely  blue  fire.  He  shrank 
away  to  the  neighborhood  of  the  more  friendly  umbrellas 
in  the  hat-rack. 

"  Oh,  he  knew  we  would  be  sure  to  meet  him,"  said  Aunt 
Valeria,  apologetically. 

"  One  can  never  be  sure  of  anything  of  the  kind  !  Sup 
pose  either  you  or  I  had  been  very  ill  !  To  drop  a  little 
child  like  that  on  a  strange  platform,  as  you  would  a  sack 
of  corn — " 

Ethan  felt  covered  with  shame  at  the  conduct  of  his 
uncle.  lie  had  heard  Mrs.  Gano  herself  criticised  in  Bos 
ton,  but  he  felt  now  that  her  standards,  after  all,  seemed 
higher,  and  her  eyes  were  certainly  more  terrifying  than 
any  in  the  house  of  Tallmadge. 

The  hackman  was  struggling  up-stairs  with  the  trunk, 
Mrs.  Gano  bidding  him  have  a  care  of  the  paper  and  the 
balustrade. 

Ethan  noticed  there  was  a  big  open  door  at  the  end  of 
the  hall  and  a  vision  through  of  a  veranda  and  green  trees. 
In  the  hall  was  an  oaken  hat-rack,  with  umbrella-stand 
and  two  carved  oaken  chairs  on  either  side,  with  high  fleur- 
de-lis  backs.  While  his  grandmother  was  paying  the  hack 
man,  the  child  discovered  that  the  seats  of  these  chairs 
lifted  up  in  a  miraculous  manner.  Unnoticed,  lie  raised 
one  a  little  and  inserted  his  hand — something  prickly,  even 
porcupinuy  !  He  withdrew  precipitately.  Was  it  a  beast 

44 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

in  there,  or  only  a  brush  ?    He  resolved  upon  cautious  ex 
ploration  at  a  more  convenient  season. 

The  hackman  was  going  now,  and  Aunt  Valeria  was 
taking  the  boy  up-stairs  to  be  washed. 

"  Don't  be  long,"  said  his  grandmother,  smiling  over  the 
banister  as  he  went  up  ;  "  supper  is  ready." 

What  a  comfort  that  she  seemed  to  have  forgotten  Uncle 
Tallmadge's  disgraceful  conduct ! 

The  one  jarring  note  during  that  first  meal  under  his 
grandmother's  roof  was  the  apparition  of  the  negress  who 
had  dared  to  offer  to  kiss  him.  To  be  sure,  when  she 
appeared  this  time,  it  was  with  a  plate  of  smoking  squares 
of  Johnny-cake  ;  but  Ethan  couldn't  meet  her  eye,  and 
shrank  under  his  blue  serge  jacket  when  she  came  behind 
his  chair  to  oifer  him  that  delectable  staple  of  a  Southern 
supper-table.  He  did  not  notice  that  the  meal  was  very 
plain,  it  was  all  so  good,  and  the  silver  on  the  table  was 
much  prettier  than  that  Miss  Tallmadge  presided  over  in 
Boston. 

While  his  Aunt  Valeria  and  his  grandmother  talked,  he 
ate  steadily,  and  regarded  with  awe  the  immensely  tall 
coffee-pot  and  other  things  that  were  covered  all  over  with 
trees  and  little  pagoda-like  buildings  in  repousse.  Seeing 
Mrs.  Gano  behind  this  service  gave  him  an  impression  of 
her  wealth  and  magnificence  that  no  after  series  of  meagre 
meals  and  authentic  knowledge  of  her  poverty  was  ever 
able  quite  to  efface.  Observing  the  child  craning  his  neck 
to  see  the  inscription  on  the  sugar-bowl,  she  turned  it  tow 
ards  him. 

"  It  is  your  own  name,"  she  said  :  "  Ethan  Gano.  It 
will  belong  to  you  some  day." 

"  Oh!"  said  Ethan,  feeling  his  prospects  to  be  princely. 

"  Now  you  may  come  and  walk  about  a  little,"  she  said, 
rising.  "  But  fold  your  napkin  and  put  it  in  your  ring." 

He  noticed  the  ring  was  marked  "  E.  G.,"  and  laid  it 
down  with  a  sense  of  ownership.  It  wasn't  like  visiting  in 
a  strange  place  when  you  found  your  own  name  on  the 
things  at  supper. 

45 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

Valeria  brought  her  mother  a  shawl,  and  disappeared. 
Ethan  put  his  hand  in  Mrs.  Gano's,  and  with  great  care 
moderating  his  child's  pace  to  one  sedate  and  slow,  lie 
passed  out  on  to  the  veranda  at  the  back  with  his  grand 
mother  on  that  first  tour  of  inspection.  There  were  heavy 
wooden  settees  on  the  veranda  against  the  wall. 

"  Oh,  I  shall  sit  here  when  I  do  my  lessons/'  said  Ethan, 
corning  out  of  his  shyness. 

"No;  you  must  bring  out  a  chair,"  said  his  grand 
mother  ;  "  these  benches  are  so  black." 

"  What  makes  them  black  ?" 

"The  soM.  We  burn  bituminous  coal  here.  You'll 
have  to  \vash  your  hands  oftener  than  you  do  in  Boston." 

"  Doesn't  anybody  ever  sit  on  these  benches  ?" 

"Never.     Why  do  you  do  lessons  in  holiday  time  ?" 

"  Grandfather  expects  me  to." 

"Humph  !"  said  Mrs.  Gano. 

They  had  come  down  off  the  veranda  towards  the  ter 
races  that  sloped  on  this  side  down  below  the  level  of  the 
street  at  the  bottom  of  the  property,  which  occupied  an 
angle  between  Washington  Street  and  Mioto  Avenue. 
They  went  down  the  first  flight  of  stone  steps,  but  stopped 
at  the  top  of  the  second. 

"We  won't  go  down  there,"  said  Mrs.  Gano.  "It  is  a 
perfect  wilderness.'" 

"Really?"  said  Ethan,  making  great  eyes  of  wonder. 
"  What's  down  there  ?" 

"  What  you  see.  Huge  sunflowers,  and  reeds,  and 
grasses — it's  very  damp  in  the  middle  —  and  briers  and 
wild  roses,  blackberries,  great  weeds  and  bushes,  dock  and 
tall  mullein,  and  up  on  that  side  where  the  ground  rises  a 
little  towards  the  lower  terrace,  there  used  to  be  a  gyarden 
—where  you  see  the  asparagus  gone  to  seed." 

"  But  it's  a  real  wilderness  ?"  asked  the  boy,  radiant. 

"I  should  say  so." 

"  Snakes,  too  ?" 

"I  shouldn't  wonder." 

1 1  is  heart  beat  hard.     This  was  a  wonderful   place   to 

48 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

come  to  for  a  visit.     It  was  almost  a  pity  one  didn't  live 
here. 

"Are  those  apple-trees  along  the  bottom  of  the  terrace?" 

"  No,  quince.  And  that  one  big  tree  in  the  middle  of 
the  lower  plateau  is  a  choke-pear." 

"  Isn't  there  a  vine  climbing  up  ?" 

"Yes.     There  are  grapes  down  there  in  the  autumn." 

"How  long  do  you  think  I  can  stay  ?" 

"  We'll  see,"  she  said,  in  a  somewhat  defiant  tone,  as 
they  turned  to  go  up  the  terrace. 

There  were  still  some  "snowballs"  on  the  great  guelder 
rose-bushes,  and  the  waxberries  on  the  little  one's  gleamed 
like  pearls. 

"I  like  this  place,"  said  the  child,  suddenly. 

"  That's  right,  my  dear." 

They  were  up  on  the  level  of  the  house  now,  past  the 
long  veranda  with  the  banned  black  benches.  It  was  grow 
ing  dusk,  a  time  that  under  all  conditions  of  this  child's 
life  made  rude  test  of  cheer.  He  drew  nearer  to  the  tall, 
bent  figure.  She  dropped  his  hand,  and  stooped  over  the 
edge  of  clovered  grass. 

"  What  is  it  ?"  he  asked,  as  she  stood  upright  with  some 
thing  in  her  hand. 

"A  four-leaved  clover — the  third  I've  found  to-day." 

"  Oh,  do  you  think  there  are  any  more  ?" 

He  knelt  down  and  examined  the  clump. 

"You  may  have  this,"  she  said,  presently,  "and  we'll 
come  and  look  to-morrow,  when  we  have  a  better  light." 

"Oh,  thank  you." 

He  held  the  clover  carefully,  thinking  of  the  fairy-tale. 

Now  they  were  passing  the  great,  perfectly  straight  tulip- 
tree,  that  went  up  and  up  like  a  ship's  mast  before  the  far 
away  boughs  soared  out  into  the  dim  depths  of  evening  air. 
A  light  breeze  had  risen.  A  bird  high  up  in  the  proudly 
waving  branches  twittered  faintly.  Except  for  'that,  a 
hush  was  over  the  world  ;  but  in  the  child's  heart  there 
was  a  mysterious  sense  of  tumult,  one  of  those  periodic 
waves  of  excitement  that  rush  over  sensitive  young  creat- 

47 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

tires,  along  with  the  vague  consciousness  of  the  wonder  of 
this  strange  thing,  life,  that  is  opening  out  before  their 
thrilling  senses. 

Ethan  stood  looking  up  till  a  kind  of  delicious  dizziness 
seized  him,  and  he  leaned  his  head  lightly  against  his 
grandmother's  arm.  She  smiled  down  into  his  eves,  saying 
never  a  word,  but  when  they  went  in-doors  there  was  under 
standing  between  them. 

A  large  octagon-shaped  lamp  of  debased  Moorish  design 
hung  in  the  hall,  and  the  light  came  through  the  eight 
panes  of  parti-colored  glass  with  a  cheerful,  even  festive, 
effect.  The  parlor  on  the  left  of  the  front-door  was  dark. 
The  great  room  opposite,  which  ran  the  whole  length  of 
that  end  of  the  house,  and  had  two  windows  at  either  ex 
tremity,  was  Mrs.  Gano's  sitting-room  in  summer,  and,  by 
an  arrangement  of  screens,  her  bedroom  as  well  in  winter. 
There  was  a  single  lamp  burning  on  one  of  the  pair  of 
heavy  old  card  -  tables  on  either  side  the  fireplace.  Op 
posite,  along  the  wall  separating  the  room  from  the  hall, 
stretched  a  great  old-fashioned  buffet,  consisting  of  two 
mahogany  cupboards,  with  drawers  above,  and  pillared 
porches  below,  and  an  arched  and  carved  back  bridging 
them,  and  forming  below  a  well-polished  surface,  whereon 
stood  empty  cut-glass  decanters  and  tall  celery  vases.  The 
long  drawer  of  this  middle  part  of  the  buffet,  as  well  as 
those  on  the  top  of  the  cupboards  on  either  side,  was  open 
ed  by  a  big  brass  ring  held  in  a  lion's  mouth.  The  fireplace 
opposite  was  screened  by  an  extensive  landscape  in  oils, 
framed  inornate  and  tarnished  gilt.  All  the  space  on  each 
side  of  the  mantel-piece  right  and  left  as  far  as  the  windows 
was  filled  with  bookcases  and  mineralogical  cabinets  built 
into  the  wall.  Between  the  front  windows  was  an  old- 
fashioned  escritoire,  reaching  high  up,  nearly  to  the  ceil 
ing,  always  locked,  and  equally  always  wearing  the  air  of 
a  keeper  of  things  secret  and  important.  An  engraving, 
grown  brown  with  age,  hung  in  a  faded  gilt  frame  above 
the  fireplace.  It  was  the  great  scene  from  "  Measure  for 
Measure,"  and  above  the  buffet  hung  another  from  "The 

48 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

Tempest/'  with  "  What  is't  ?  A  spirit  ?"  written  under 
neath.  On  the  mantel-piece  were  two  tall  blue  china  vases, 
that  had  been  old,  Mrs.  Gano  said,  when  she  was  young. 
She  sat  down  by  the  lamp  in  a  chair  that  no  one  ever  saw 
the  like  of  before.  Very  big  and  very  crimson,  it  was 
rounded  out  in  semicircular  fashion  on  each  side  at  the 
top,  forming  well -padded  cushions  against  which  to  rest 
the  head  ;  but  no  one  ever  saw  Mrs.  Gano  making  such  a 
use  of  them.  The  chair  had  arms  and  a  foot-rest,  and  was 
mounted  upon  short,  strong  rockers — altogether  a  structure 
of  unique  device,  that  no  one  up  to  that  time,  except  its 
proper  owner,  ever  dared  dream  of  inhabiting  for  a  moment. 

Mrs.  Gano  handed  Ethan  a  book. 

"  I  suppose  you  know  that  by  heart  ?" 

"  Moral  Tales?     No;  I've  only  heard  about  'em." 

"  Is  it  possible  ?     What  do  you  read,  then  ?" 

"  You  see,  I  have  to  study  a  good  deal." 

"  But  when  you  aren't  studying  ?" 

"  Well,  then,  you  see,  I  read  only  the  things  I  like/' 

"  To  be  sure.     But  what  kind  of  things  ?" 

"Well  "—he  colored  faintly—"!  read  Hans  Christian 
Andersen  mostly.  But  I  like  '  Horatius  at  the  Bridge/  "  he 
added,  as  though  anxious  to  redeem  his  character,  "  and 
Henry  of  Navarre,  and  Paul  Revere." 

"  Well,  now  you  may  read  Moral  Talcs.  It  was  your 
father's  book,  and  you  may  have  it  if  you'll  take  care  of  it. 
I'll  cover  it  for  you  to-morrow." 

"  Oh,  thank  you,"  said  the  boy. 

She  opened  her  own  volume  where  a  worked  marker 
kept  the  place,  and  began  to  read.  But  Ethan  was  too  ex 
cited  to  follow  suit.  He  sat  looking  at  her,  and  about  the 
room.  The  pressed  four-leaved  clover  presently  fell  out  of 
her  book  on  to  the  footstool.  He  picked  it  up  carefully 
and  handed  it  to  her. 

"  Ah  !"  she  ejaculated,  smiling,  and  turning  back  to 
the  beginning  of  the  volume,  where  she  replaced  the  leaf. 
But  Ethan  had  watched  the  discreet  turning  of  yellowed 
pages. 

49 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  Why,  your  Bible  is  full  of  clovers,"  he  said. 

"This  is  not  the  Bible,  it  is  Lockhart's  Scott,"  she 
answered.  "And  as  for  the  four -leaved  clovers,  I  find 
them  as  I  walk  about  in  the  evenings." 

"  I  suppose  you  look  for  them  because  they're  so  lucky  ?" 

"Nonsense!  of  course  not.  They  just  look  up  at  me 
from  the  grass." 

Ethan  felt  dashed  a  little,  but  he  noticed  how  the  long, 
slim  fingers  held  the  book  so  that  no  more  clovers  should 
fall  out.  She  must  think  a  good  deal  of  them,  he  con 
cluded. 

Many  an  older  person  under  the  circumstances  would 
have  felt  it  incumbent  upon  her  to  entertain  the  child  ;  but 
while  no  doubt  some  young  people  might  have  been  made 
happier  by  being  noticed  more,  there  are  those,  especially 
the  shy  and  sensitive  ones,  who  are  all  the  better  for  a  little 
wholesome  letting  alone.  It  is  evident  that  the  officious 
attempts  of  many  well-meaning  adults  to  amuse,  even  if  it 
involve  making  mountebanks  of  themselves,  are  ofttimes 
destined  to  humiliation.  We  have  all  seen  children  sol 
emnly  regarding  grown-up  capers  with  the  air  of  philoso 
phers  looking  down  with  scorn  upon  an  antic  world. 

There  was  something  in  his  grandmother's  calm  pursuit 
of  her  usual  routine  that  set  the  child  at  ease.  If  she  had 
gone  obviously  out  of  her  way  to  make  herself  agreeable  to 
him,  he,  with  the  perversity  of  his  type,  would  have  been 
more  on  his  guard  against  her  blandishments. 

His  Boston  relatives  were  evidently  quite  wrong  in  every 
respect  about  his  grandmother.  His  grandfather  Tall- 
madge  had  sympathized  with  him  deeply  at  having  to  pay 
this  duty  visit.  Even  Aunt  Hannah  had  evident  misgiv 
ings,  and  had  put  a  seed-cake  in  his  trunk.  He  felt  a  sud 
den  resentment  against  those  estimable  persons  for  their 
distrust  and  thinly  veiled  dislike  of  his  grandmother  Gano. 
Already  he  saw  himself  her  champion  and  faithful  knight, 
ready  to  do  battle,  if  need  be,  for  his  sovereign  lady.  It 
was  not  altogether  strange  that  the  conquest  of  the  child 
was  so  speedy,  for  the  heart  of  the  woman  was  full  of  a 

50 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

passionate  tenderness  for  this  little  Ethan  come  back  again, 
so  like  the  one  she  had  lost  that  he  seemed  to  bring 
with  him  her  youth  and  all  the  sunny  circumstance  of 
those  far-off  Maryland  clays.  She  softened  wondrously  to 
the  child,  yet  it  was  so  little  her  way  to  be  demonstrative 
that  she  neither  alarmed  nor  bored  the  boy,  but  simply 
took  hold  on  his  imagination.  He,  quick  of  spirit  and 
keen  of  sense,  responded  as  the  natural  child  will,  to  the 
reassuring  spectacle  of  beautiful  and  august  age.  What 
children  suffer  from  sheer  ugliness  in  their  elders  is  not  to 
be  written  down.  Partly  in  that  many  mercifully  forget, 
and  partly  in  that  others  remember  certain  martyrdoms  too 
vividly  to  set  them  down  without  a  blush.  One  is  inclined 
to  think,  looking  back,  that  life  has  taught  us  nothing 
more  successfully  than  tolerance  of  these  departures  from 
a  possible  comeliness  ;  for  it  is  not  irregularity  of  feature 
or  deepening  furrows  or  whitening  hair  that  appall  the  child, 
but  the  unnecessary  ugliness  of  dress  and  eccentricity  of 
demeanor,  and,  above  all,  the  avoidable  and  indecent  dis 
play  of  the  ravages  of  time. 

With  every  desire  to  think  nobly  of  women,  it  must  be 
admitted  that  it  is  chiefly  they  who  offend  against  the 
canon  childhood  unconsciously  sets  up,  that  old  age  shall 
not  with  impunity  offend  or  affright  the  young. 

Mrs.  Gano  would  have  repelled  indignantly  the  idea  that 
her  grandson's  affection  had  anything  to  do  with  her  spot 
less  neatness  ;  the  sober  distinction  of  her  plain  silk  gowns, 
made  before  the  war  ;  her  white  lawn  kerchiefs,  rolling  up 
from  her  V-shaped  bodice,  fold  on  fold,  voluminous  and 
soft  about  her  neck ;  her  full  lawn  undersleeves,  that  came 
so  daintily  out  from  the  silk,  and  fastened  with  a  silver 
shell  button  at  the  wrist,  flowing  out  again  in  a  fine  ruffle, 
and  falling  over  her  hands.  As  to  that  most  distinctive 
touch  of  all,  the  veil  of  plain  white  net  that  covered,  and 
yet  did  not  conceal,  the  thick  silver  hair  massed  about  the 
high  shell  comb,  one  cannot  help  thinking  that  if  she  had 
quite  realized  its  effectiveness,  she  would  have  considered 
it  her  duty  to  discard  it.  She  always  said  she  disliked 

51 


Til  K  OI'KN  gl*  KST  I  UN- 
caps  as  "would-be  ornamental/'  and  besides,  she  had  "  too 
much  hair  ;"  she  "  would  be  top-heavy  in  a  cup."  So  she 
had  adopted  the  white  net  veil,  fastened  just  behind  the 
heavy  rings  of  hair  on  the  temples  with  a  pair  of  pearl  and 
silver  pins  of  curious  old  design,  and  the  veil  fell  down  to  the 
shoulders  behind,  concealing  the  neck,  masking  a  little  the 
droop  of  the  bowed  back,  and  falling  softly  down  each  side 
of  the  strong  old  face,  and  dropping  into  her  lap. 

The  child  sat  with  the  open  book  in  his  hand,  but  with 
big  eyes  roving,  reading  as  well  as  lie  could  the  more  ob 
scure  but  not  less  interesting  story  incarnate  in  the  great 
red  chair,  getting  the  details  by  heart  in  the  observant  way 
of  children. 

"  What  time  do  you  usually  go  to  bed  ?"  she  asked,  pres 
ently,  turning  a  page. 

"  When  I  feel  sleepy." 

"  H'm  !  I  think  eight  o'clock  is  a  good  time." 

"  It's  pretty  early,"  he  said,  wistfully. 

"Your  father,  when  he  was  your  age,  always  went  to 
bed  at  eight." 

"Oh  !" 

"  Aunt  Jerusha  will  come  presently  and  take  you  up 
stairs." 

" Aunt  Jerusha  !" 

lie  dropped  the  Moral  Tales  on  the  floor.  The  terrifying 
black  woman  was  his  aunt  ! 

"  Oh,  oh  !  that's  not  the  way  to  treat  books.  The  Ganos 
are  always  very  careful  of  their  books." 

Ethan  recovered  the  volume  hurriedly,  a  prey  to  con 
flicting  agitations. 

"  Where's  Aunt  Valeria  ?"  he  said,  presently. 

"Up  in  the  blue  room" — Mrs.  Gano  glanced  overhead, 
and  then  looked  out  severely  into  space  over  her  gold  spec 
tacles,  adding,  meditatively,  "  making  herself  ill  with  writ 
ing." 

"Oh,  if  she's  writing  letters,  I  s'pose  I  mustn't  'sturb 
her." 

"H'm  !  she's  not  writing  letters." 

52 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  What  is  she  writing  ?" 

"Verses,  most  probably/' 

"  Poetry  verses  ?" 

"Well,  verses,  at  any  rate,"  she  said,  a  little  grimly.  It 
was  noticed  that  during  Valeria's  lifetime  Mrs.  Gano  never 
spoke  of  her  daughter's  work  except  as  "  verses  ;"  after  her 
death  it  was  all  "poetry."  "It's  high  time  she  was  in 
terrupted.  Go  up-stairs,  child,"  she  said,  turning  to  Ethan, 
"  and  knock  at  the  door  next  your  own,  and  say  I  sent  you." 

It  was  a  possible  escape  from  that  other  most  awful 
"  aunt."  He  laid  the  Moral  Tales  down  as  if  they  were 
made  of  glass,  and  departed  with  alacrity. 

Twice  he  had  to  knock  upon  the  blue  room  door  before 
a  voice  said  : 

"  Who's  there  ?" 

"It's  me,  Aunt  Valeria." 

"  Oh,  run  away,  dear." 

"But,  please,  I'm  sent." 

A  little  pause  and  the  door  was  opened.  A  spacious 
bedchamber,  where  everything  —  walls,  curtains,  carpet, 
and  bedfurnishing — was  a  soft  faded  blue,  almost  gray  in 
this  light.  The  floor  was  strewn  with  papers,  books  and 
papers  lay  on  the  chairs,  on  the  sofa,  even  on  the  preter- 
naturally  high  and  massive  bedstead,  that  looked  quite  in 
accessible  to  all  save  the  athletic  without  the  aid  of  a 
ladder. 

"  Did  my  mother  send  you  ?"  asked  Aunt  Valeria. 

"Yes,  and — oh,  are  you  awful  busy  ?" 

His  voice  faltered  a  little. 

"  Why  ?"  she  said,  taking  the  child  by  the  hand  and 
leading  him  in. 

The  action  of  kindliness  wrought  upon  the  perturbed 
little  spirit.  His  eyes  filled  with  tears. 

"You  see,"  he  said,  "I  thought  she  was  a  servant." 

"  Who  was  a  servant  ?" 

"My  other  aunt." 

"Miss  Tallmadge  ?" 

"No,  the  other  one  here  But  I  like  you  best.  Won't 

53 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

you  take  me  up  to  bed  ?  Of  course  I  do  everything  for 
myself;  it  won't  be  a  great  trouble  ;  it's  only  just  so  my 
other  aunt  needn't  come  even  as  far  as  the  door." 

"What  other?" 

"Aunt  J — J — Jerusha,"  he  said,  with  an  excited  sob. 

Valeria  began  to  laugh,  a  thing  she  seldom  did. 

"My  poor  little  boy!"  she  said,  "Jerusha's  the  cook, 
and  a  very  good  friend  to  all  of  us.  People  in  the  South 
call  a  good  old  servant  like  that  'aunt'  when  they  like 
her  as  much  as  we  do  Jerusha.  She  used  to  be  a  slave  ; 
we  brought  her  from  Maryland." 

"  And  she's  not  my  really  truly  aunt  at  all  ?" 

"  Of  course  not,  you  foolish  little  boy  !  Didn't  you  see 
she  was  a  negress  ?" 

"Oh  yes,  I  saw  that." 

lie  shuddered. 

"And  didn't  you  see  she  waited  on  us  at  the  table  ?" 

"Yes,  but  so  does  Aunt  Hannah  in  Boston  on  Sun 
days." 

"  Does  she  ?"  Then  seeing  the  child's  anxiety  was  not 
quite  dissipated  :  "  Didn't  you  notice  when  she'd  finished 
waiting  at  supper  Jerusha  went  back  to  the  kitchen  ?  Now, 
if  she'd  been  a  real  aunt — 

"Well,  you  see,  I  did  think  of  that,  but  I  thought  per 
haps  aunts  didn't  come  and  sit  in  the  parlor  here,  and  I 
remembered  how  she  —  she  "  -  he  looked  down  and  grew 
scarlet — "tried  to  kiss  me  at  the  station." 

"Oh  yes,  she  might  do  that.  You  see,  she  was  very 
fond  of  your  father." 

"  But  my  father  didn't  use  to  kiss  her." 

"Oh,  I  dare  say— 

"  No,  Aunt  Valeria  ;  I  should  think  he  never  did." 

"  Perhaps  not,  then,"  she  said,  humoring  him. 

"Do  you  think,"  he  began,  in  a  half-whisper — "do  you 
think  when  she  takes  me  up  to  bed  she'll — she'll — " 

"  I  don't  know,  but  I'll  take  you  myself,  if  you'd  like 
that  better." 

"Oh,  I  would,  Aunt  Valeria." 

54 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  Very  well,  then.  Come,  we'll  go  down-stairs  and  say 
good-night." 

He  slipped  his  hand  in  hers. 

"  Of  course,  I  didn't  really  think  she  was  my  aunt/'  he 
said,  with  the  easy  mendacity  of  childhood. 


CHAPTER  V 

ALTHOUGH  this  visit  was  the  only  one  Ethan  was  destined 
to  pay  to  Xew  Plymouth  before  he  came  to  man's  estate, 
he  carried  back  with  him  to  Boston  at  the  holiday's  end 
something  more  than  an  intimate  understanding  with  his 
father's  people,  and  a  vivid  picture  of  the  outer  aspect  of 
life  in  the  house  of  his  grandmother. 

Out  of  his  fear  of  Aunt  Jerusha  that  first  evening  grew 
the  habit  of  Valeria's  visiting  his  room  ten  minutes  or  so 
after  he  had  said  good-night.  During  those  first  evenings, 
when  he  was  allowed  a  candle  to  go  to  bed  by,  this  small  at 
tention  on  his  aunt's  part  was  for  the  ostensible  purpose  of 
putting  out  the  light  and  opening  his  windows.  Later  on 
she  went  for  no  better  reason  than  that  the  child  would  be 
expecting  her.  Absent-minded  dreamer  as  she  was,  after 
the  second  evening  of  Ethan's  stay  she  never  forgot  what 
became  her  kindly  custom. 

On  this  particular  evening,  as  she  sat  among  the  litter 
in  the  blue  room,  her  acute  ears  caught  a  faint  sound  of 
sobbing.  She  hurried  into  the  adjoining  chamber,  and 
found  all  dark  and  silent,  Ethan  breathing  regularly,  ap 
parently  asleep.  She  bent  over  in  the  faint  moonlight  to 
kiss  him,  and  found  his  face  wet  with  tears. 

"  My  dear  !     Then  it  was  you  ?" 

"  Me  ?"  he  inquired,  in  a  steady  voice. 

<4  Yes.     Why  were  you  crying  ?" 

After  a  pause  : 

"  I  thought  the  walls  were  so  awful  thick,"  he  said,  as  if 
answering  her  question  with  all  circumstance. 

"  Shall  I  light  the  candle  again  ?" 

56 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"Xo,  thank  you/"  he  said,  sedately;  "I  can  see  the 
moon  through  the  locust-tree." 

She  went  to  the  window,  and  leaning  her  folded  arms  on 
the  wide  seat,  she  repeated  softly,  as  she  looked  out  : 

"  'And,  like  a  dying  lady,  lean  and  pale, 
Who  totters  forth,  wrapt  in  a  gauzy  veil, 
Out  of  her  chamber,  led  by  the  insane 
And  feeble  wanderings  of  her  fading  brain, 
The  moon  arose  up  in  the  murky  east 
A  white  and  shapeless  mass.' " 

"  Is  that  what  you've  been  writing,  Aunt  Valeria  ?" 

"  Xo."  She  came  back  and  sat  down  on  the  side  of  his 
bed.  "  Xo ;  Shelley  wrote  it.  What  shall  I  do  for  you  ?" 
she  said,  wondering  how  women  that  were  used  to  children 
would  meet  the  exigency,  for  the  little  voice  was  plaintive 
in  spite  of  itself. 

"I  don't  want  anything."  Ethan  said,  stoutly,  and  there 
was  another  pause.  Then,  by  way  of  a  delicate  hint : 
"  Grandmamma  has  been  telling  me  a  story." 

"Has  she  ?" 

"Yes;  about  when  she  was  young.  Tell  me  about 
when  you  were  young,  Aunt  Valeria." 

The  innocent  petition  jarred.  Valeria  was  the  youngest 
of  her  family,  and  had  never  yet  been  asked  to  think  of 
herself  as  one  who  had  left  youth  behind. 

"  There's  nothing  to  tell  about  me,"  she  said. 

"Didn't  you  ever  cross  the  Alleghanies  in  a  stage-coach  ?" 

"  Xo  ;  all  that  was  before  my  time." 

"Didn't  you  ever  go  to  visit  your  grandfather  Calvert  in 
the  mountains  of  Virginia  ?" 

"  Xo  ;  he  died  before  I  was  born." 

"  Then,  you  never  got  homesick  ?"  His  voice  wavered  a 
little,  and  then,  quite  firmly,  he  added:  "Grandmamma 
did,  and  she  used  to  go  off  by  herself  to  meet  the  postman, 
who  came  only  once  a  week,  and  she'd  walk  and  walk  till 
she  heard  him  wind  his  horn.  How  do  you  'spose  he 
wound  it  ?" 

57 


TIIK    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  He  just  blew  a  long  blast." 

"Did  that  make  it  wind?  Well,  anyhow,  when  he 
wound  it,  that  used  to  make  grandmamma  homesioker 
than  ever.  It  used  to  echo  all  about  among  her  grand 
father's  mountains,  and  when  she  heard  that  she  used  to 
stop  running,  and  sit  down  on  a  rock  and  cry  and  cry. 
You  see,  she  was  so  afraid  the  postman  wasn't  bringing 
the  letter  to  say  Aunt  Cadwallader  was  coming  to  take  her 
home." 

"  Did  my  mother  tell  you  that  story  to-night  ?''  inquired 
Aunt  Valeria,  without  enthusiasm. 

"No;  it  was  this  morning,  when  I  said  I  wasn't  a  bit 
homesick  like  Aunt  Hannah  said  I'd  be.  Grandmamma 
seemed  to  think  it  didn't  matter  if  I  was  homesick.  The 
Ganos  nearly  always  are,  but  in  the  end  they're  always  glad 
they  came." 

This  obscure  saying  seemed  not  to  rivet  Aunt  Valeria's 
attention  ;  she  moved  as  if  she  were  going.  Ethan  sat  up 
in  bed  and  asked,  a  little  feverishly  : 

"Did  you  know  about  Aunt  Cadwallader  bein'  in  the  war?" 

"No  ;  I  never  heard  she  was  in  the  war." 

"  Well,  she  was.  She  was  about  four  years  old,  and  the 
British  were  firing  on  Fort  McIIenry,  and  all  the  doors  and 
windows  in  Baltimore  were  shut,  and  nobody  went  out, 
and  everybody  was  living  in  the  cellar,  so's  not  to  get  shot, 
and  bombs  were  exploding  in  the  garden,  and  the  fambly 
missed  Aunt  Cadwallader — " 

"  Oh  yes,"  said  Aunt  Valeria;  "she  was  out  in  the  gar 
den,  wasn't  she,  picking  up  the  bullets  ?" 

"Yes;  they  were  raining  all  about,  and  she  was  putting 
them  in  a  little  egg-basket  she  carried  on  her  arm."  Ethan 
finished,  a  shade  crestfallen  to  find  his  scheme  to  entertain 
and,  above  all,  to  detain  his  aunt  had  been  forestalled.  "  I 
thought  perhaps  if  I  told  you  you'd  remember  something 
that  happened  to  you — when  you  were  young,  you  know." 

"I'm  sorry  I  don't  know  any  stories." 

"  Don't  you  know  the  one  about  the  poor  man  over  your 
fireplace  ?" 

58 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

What  poor  man?"  she  repeated,  bewildered. 

The  man  without  his  clo'es  on,  tied  to  the  wild  horse/' 

'f  Oh,  you  mean  the  Mazeppa  on  the  iron  fire  frame." 

Yes" — Ethan  sat  up  again,  with  dilated  eyes — "wolfs 
comin'  after  him,  wif  mouths  wide  open." 

"Oh,  well,  they  don't  eat  him  up;  he  gets  away,  and 
lives  happy  ever  after." 

"I  am  glad!" 

He  lay  down,  and  she  covered  him  up. 

"I'd  sing  to  you,  but  I'm  afraid  it  would  disturb  my 
mother." 

"Then,  couldn't  you  say  some  more  poetry  or  some 
thing  ?" 

"I  don't  believe  I  know  anything  you'd  like." 

"Oh,  I'd  like  anything — except  the  '  May  Queen/ '' 

She  sat  silent  a  moment,  and  then  began  : 

"'Once  upon  a  midnight  dreary — ' 

"H'm!" — and  she  stopped. 

"Can't  you  remember  any  more?"  inquired  the  boy, 
eagerly. 

"Well  —  a  —  perhaps  something  else;"  and  she  made  a 
fresh  start  : 

"'Ah,  what  can  ail  thee,  knight-at-arms, 

Alone  and  palely  loitering  ? 
The  sedge  is  withered  from  the  lake, 
And  no  birds  sing. 

"  'Ah,  what  can — ' 

No,  no  ;  I  must  think  of  something  a  little  less — " 
Another  pause,  and  then  : 

"  'Raise  the  light,  my  page,  that  I  may  see  her  : 
Thou  hast  come  at  last,  then,  haughty  queen.'" 

On  and  on  the  low  voice  chanted,  whispered,  verse  after 
verse  and  page  on  page,  until  the  child  slept  sound.  In 
this  wise  was  the  habit  formed  of  Aunt  Valeria's  prolong- 

59 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

ing  her  nightly  ministrations  till  Ethan  was  safe  beyond 
the  touch  of  homesickness,  beyond  the  need  of  a  doubtful 
cheer.  From  most  of  her  selections,  it  must  be  confessed, 
lie  derived  only  the  vague  comfort  of  listening  to  the 
rhythmic  rise  and  fall  of  a  friendly,  sleep  -  wooing  voice, 
that  sent  him  softly  to  oblivion.  But  as  the  days  went  on 
he  developed  tyrannous  preferences,  and  would  call  for 
"The  Neckan"as  regularly  as  he  had  been  used  in  infancy 
to  demand  "  The  New  England  Cat."  He  managed  to  keep 
awake  longer  as  time  went  on,  and  it  took  "  The  Ancient  Mari 
ner,"  or  the  solemn  and  somnolent-burdened  rhyme  of  the 
"  Duchess  May  "  to  send  him  to  the  land  of  Nod.  He  came 
to  know  these  favorites  by  heart,  and  would  prompt  Valeria 
if  she  ventured  to  skip  or  hesitated  at  a  line.  In  after 
years  he  used  to  feel  it  odd  to  realize  how  much  English 
verse  he  knew  by  heart  that  he  had  never  seen  upon  the 
printed  page.  But  Aunt  Valeria's  patience  was  sometimes 
sorely  taxed  by  his  wide-eyed  attention  to  the  story.  Then 
it  was  she  would  unkindly  lapse  into  German,  against  which 
no  young  wakefulness  is  proof. 

"Now  go  to  sleep,"  she  would  admonish,  "or  I'll  say 
'Kennst  du  das  Land/*  Notwithstanding  it  was  a  very 
dull  poem,  she  would  say  it  over  and  over,  and  Ethan,  van 
quished  utterly,  would  fall  asleep  with  the  refrain,  "  Dahin, 
Dahin,  Mocht  ich  mit  Dir  0  mem  Geliebter  ziehn,"  sound 
ing  in  his  ears.  He  had  his  own  view  of  what  it  was  all  about, 
and  classed  it  with  such  ditties  as  "Annabel  Lee."  "Dah 
in"  he  was  satisfied  was  the  heroine,  and  he  determined  on 
his  return  to  Boston  to  bestow  the  name  upon  the  least  at 
tractive  of  three  terrier  puppies,  fresh  arrivals  in  his  ab 
sence. 

There  was  no  one  to  play  with,  apparently,  here  in  New 
Plymouth,  but  few  children  could  have  felt  the  lack  so  lit 
tle  as  Ethan.  Nobody  interfered  with  him,  nobody  seemed 
to  want  him  to  study.  The  spectre  of  Grandfather  Tall- 
mud  gc  was  still  potent  enough  to  make  him  carry  about  a 
French  grammar  in  the  shallow  jacket-pocket,  that  was  al 
ways  ejecting  it  upon  an  indifferent  world.  Ethan,  on  its 

GO 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

every  mal  d  propos  appearance,  would  hurry  the  book  out 
of  sight  with  an  uneasy  conscience,  and  betake  himself 
into  the  wilderness,  where  he  owned  an  oasis  under  a  bar 
berry  -  bush  ;  or  he  would  seek  diversion  from  linguistic 
cares  in  the  sooty  attic.  Nobody  seemed  to  mind,  if  only 
lie  were  washed  when  he  appeared  on  the  surface  again. 
That  same  attic,  however,  was  a  place  of  peril.  You 
gained  access  to  it  by  means  of  a  ladder  in  a  closet  on  the 
upper  landing,  and  you  went  up  through  a  trap-door  into  a 
dim  and  stifling  atmosphere  ;  not  but  what  there  were  win 
dows,  but  they  seemed  to  admit  only  heat  and  soot.  There 
was  an  army  of  disabled  or  disused  pots,  pitchers,  vases, 
and  so  on,  standing  in  the  middle  of  the  rough  wooden 
floor,  and  above  them  stretched  a  long  table  like  a  counter, 
on  which  were  ranged  queer  lamps  and  candlesticks,  brack 
ets,  door-knobs,  pewter  vessels  and  great  platters,  candle- 
snuffers  and  trays,  and  all  manner  of  household  goods  and 
gear  that  had,  then  been  long  out  of  fashion,  and  had  not 
yet  come  back  again.  With  grimy  fingers  Ethan  poked 
about,  taking  great  care  not  to  step  off  the  middle  aisle  of 
flooring  on  to  the  lath  and  plaster  between  the  mighty 
hand-hewn  beams.  Sometimes,  in  more  daring  moods,  he 
would  venture  farther  afield,  balancing  cautiously  on  a 
beam  to  some  remote  cobwebby  corner  to  examine  nearer 
an  object  that  had  lured  him  long  with  its  air  of  the  unat 
tainable.  In  this  way  he  made  acquaintance  with  certain 
pictures  turned  disobligingly  to  the  wall,  and  a  great  horse 
hair  trunk,  into  which  he  peeped  with  palpitating  heart ; 
for  all  the  world  knew  that  such  trunks  were  the  abode  of 
skeleton  ladies.  But  here  were  only  dusty  papers.  The 
far  corner  he  never  ventured  into  :  it  was  there  the  great 
elk  antlers  shone,  and  the  skull  and  white  teeth  grinned 
and  threatened.  One  had  just  to  pretend  it  was  chained 
there,  and  strained  impotently  to  get  at  little  boys.  Turn 
ing  over  a  lot  of  ancient  rubbish  in  a  box  one  day,  he  came 
across  a  hea*  y  old  brass  door-knocker  with  "E.  G-ano"  on 
it.  Down-. ^tairs  he  rushed,  all  black  and  beaming. 

Mrs.  Gano  was  sitting,  as  usual,  very  upright  in  the 

61 


TI1K    OPEN    QUESTION 

great  red  chair,  with  Dean  Stanley's  History  of  the  East 
ern  Church  open  on  her  knees. 

"  My  child,  you're  like  a  blackamoor  !" 

"  But  just  look  what  I've  found  !" 

"  Ah,  yes  !  I  had  that  taken  off  the  front-door  the  lust 
thing  before  I  left  Maryland." 

"  Why  didn't  you  put  it  on  the  front-door  here?" 

"You  see,  it's  <E.  Gano.'  There  was  no  •  E.  Gano' 
then,"  she  said,  with  shadowed  face. 

"  But  there  is  now — I'm  here." 

"  To  be  sure,"  she  answered,  smiling.  "  As  your  grand 
father  said,  'It's  necessary  to  have  an  Ethan  in  every  genera 
tion  to  avoid  re-marking  things.'  We'll  have  the  knocker 
put  up,  if  you  like.  Venie  will  polish  it." 

"  Shall  I  ask  her  please  to  come  to  you  as  soon  as  she's 
done  her  work  ?"  he  said,  hesitatingly,  for  an  interview 
with  these  black  women  was  not  yet  lightly  to  be  faced. 

"Tell  her  I  want  her  at  once,"  said  his  grandmother,  a 
little  brusquely. 

lie  was  struck  with  her  peremptoriness. 

"Sha'n't  I  say  'please'?"  he  inquired. 

"  Certainly  not.  It's  not  as  my  servants  please,  but  as  I 
please.  Tell  her  to  come." 

Ethen  knew  now  that  his  manner  to  Aunt  Jerusha  and 
her  daughter  must  have  appeared  abject  according  to  Gano 
standards.  He  secretly  determined  to  adopt  a  loftier  de 
meanor.  Vain  ambition  !  Never  once  in  his  life  did  he 
find  the  accent,  let  alone  the  conviction,  of  the  superior, 
except  with  persons  of  his  own  station.  Of  servants  he 
asked  service  unwillingly,  and,  to  the  end  of  his  days,  with 
an  uneasy  sense  that  somebody  was  being  abased — he  in 
clined  to  think  it  was  himself.  The  wages  question  never 
in  his  estimation  touched  the  heart  of  the  obligation.  Any 
underlining  of  the  relation  of  master  and  servant  was  as 
irksome  to  him  as  if  he  had  come  of  generations  of  com 
munists,  instead  of  a  race  of  tyrannous  slave-holders. 

Venie  brightened  up  the  knocker  till  it  shone  like  gold, 
and  Aunt  Jerusha,  who  could  do  anything  on  earth,  ap- 

62 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

parently,  promised  to  come  round  and  screw  it  firmly  in  its 
place  at  exactly  the  angle  it  had  taken  on  the  great  white 
door  "down  South/' 

It  was  over  this  business  of  the  knocker  that  Ethan  made 
friends  with  Aunt  Jerusha.  He  was  still  mortally  afraid 
of  her,  but  he  had  come  to  that  point  where  he  was  able  to 
snatch  a  fearful  joy  in  passing  quite  near  her  without 
flinching,  as  though  she  had  been  any  ordinary  white  per 
son,  whose  eyes  didn't  roll,  and  whose  plaited  wool  didn't 
escape  in  little  horns  from  under  a  flaming  bandanna.  He 
had  insisted  on  carrying  the  tool-box  and  the  hammer  and 
the  big  screw-driver  from  the  kitchen  round  to  the  front 
porch.  It  was  so  that  his  intention  to  be  lofty  and  aloof 
had  ended.  At  the  front-door  stood  his  grandmother. 

"You've  got  a  lazy  man's  load,"  she  said. 

And,  as  if  on  purpose  to  justify  her,  down  dropped  the 
screw-driver  on  the  gravel,  and  out  jumped  the  French 
grammar  on  the  grass.  He  recovered  the  book,  and  as  he 
reached  after  the  screw-driver  away  slid  the  hammer  off  the 
tool-box. 

"  Put  down  your  book.  Don't  try  to  do  so  many  things 
at  once.  That's  how  your  great-uncle  Rezin  put  out  his 
eyes  at  Harper's  Ferry,  and  Shelley  lost  his  life  trying  to 
read  and  sail  a  boat  at  the  same  time." 

Who  was  this  Shelley  who  was  always  being  quoted,  and 
where  did  he  come  into  the  family  saga  ?  Byron,  too,  and 
others  he  hadn't  heard  mentioned  in  Boston.  The  appear 
ance  of  Aunt  Jerusha  see-sawing  round  the  corner  was  a 
welcome  diversion,  and  soon  the  glittering  knocker  was 
screwed  firmly  into  place.  It  was  a  triumph.  Aunt 
Valeria  was  called  down  to  see,  and  admitted  it  was  re 
splendent  ! 

"  Isn't  it  delicious  having  our  very  own  Maryland  knocker 
on  the  door  again  !"  remarked  the  young  gentleman,  with 
as  heartfelt  satisfaction  as  though  he  had  watched  the  de 
cline  and  fall  of  the  old  house  in  the  South,  and  now  saw 
the  family  fortunes  to  be  mending. 

His  grandmother  patted  his  shoulder. 

63 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  We  say  '  delicious '  of  good  things  to  eat,  not  of  door 
knockers,  even  when  they  come  from  Maryland." 

"  Oh,  you  wouldn't  limit  such  a  word  as  delicious  to 
things  we  eat,"  remonstrated  Aunt  Valeria.  "That's  a 
point  where  I've  always  differed  from  Byron." 

"Then  I'm  surprised  to  hear  it,  for  it's  one  of  the  few 
things  he  got  right." 

The  younger  woman  withdrew  into  her  shell,  making  no 
rejoinder,  but  pausing  at  the  bottom  of  the  stairs  on  her 
way  back  to  her  work,  with  an  air  of  perfunctory  deference, 
to  hear  her  mother  out.  Ethan  watched  the  two  with  in 
terest,  feeling  that  he  and  his  aunt  were  in  the  same  boat. 

"We  can't  be  too  jealous  of  guarding  the  purity  and 
honesty  of  language,"  Mrs.  Gano  said,  firmly.  "Any  one 
who  has  the  smallest  pretence  to  caring  for  letters  or  for 
accuracy,  or  for  truth,  must  do  what  he  can  to  oppose  the 
debasing  of  the  current  coin  of  speech.  If  you  use  words 
loosely,  you'll  begin  to  think  loosely,  and  in  the  end  you'll 
find  you've  lost  your  sense  of  values,  and  one  word  means 
no  more  than  another.  You'll  be  like  Ethan  here,  who 
tells  me  '  bonny  clabber '  is  perfectly  splendid,  and  that  he 
'  loves '  Jerusha's  Johnny-cake.  After  that,  he  mustn't 
say  he  loves  you  and  me.  It  would  be  like  kissing  us  after 
the  cat." 

"  It's  a  kitten"  said  Ethan,  feeling  froward  aim  very 
bold. 

His  grandmother  laughed  delightedly. 

"Oh,  very  well,  we'll  be  accurate,  if  it's  only  about  a 
kitten  that  I  haven't  so  much  as  seen." 

The  child  flashed  out  to  the  veranda  and  returned  with  a 
small  basket,  in  which  lay  a  diminutive  coal-black  object. 

"You  ,?aicl  you  didn't  like  animals,"  he  observed,  re 
proachfully. 

"  I  don't — not  in  the  house." 

"This  one's  very  little  to  stay  out  o'  doors." 

"Yes,  it's  too  little  to  stay  here  at  all." 

"  Oh  no,  it  isn't  so  little  as  that." 

lie  pulled  out  its  tail  that  it  might  look  as  long  as  pos- 

64 


THE    OTEN    QUESTION 

sible,  but  it  would  curl  under.     He  lifted  the  creature  tip, 
clawing  and  feebly  wailing. 

"Why,  Ethan,"  said  Aunt  Valeria  over  the  banisters, 
"  it  hasn't  got  its  eyes  open." 

"Not  just  yet." 

"  Can  it  walk  ?" 

"Well,  not  much,"  said  Ethan,  guardedly;  "but  no 
body  walks  as  young  as  this.  The  Otways'  cat  brought  it 
over  in  her  mouth.  They're  nice  to  the  Otways'  cat  in  the 
kitchen." 

There  was  judgment  delivered  in  the  phrase. 

"  Venus  must  take  the  thing  home,"  said  Mrs.  Gano,  ey 
ing  the  wailing  one  with  coldness. 

"  Oh,  grandmamma  !" 

There  bade  fair  to  be  a  duet  of  lamentation. 

"It  will  die  if  it's  left  here." 

"  No,  no  ;  I'll  take  care  of  it."     lie  clasped  it  fondly. 

"We  don't  know  what  to  do  for  such  a  young  creature." 

"  Oh  yes,  we  do,"  interrupted  Ethan.  He  came  nearer, 
notwithstanding  Mrs.  Gano's  edging  away  from  her  grimy 
descendant,  and  from  the  small,  wailing,  trembling,  claw 
ing  object  on  his  breast.  The  child  took  hold  of  her  gown, 
and  said,  with  ingratiating,  upturned  face,  "  Dear  grand 
mamma,  couldn't  we  buy  it  a  cow  ?" 

/The  suggestion  apparently  pleased  his  unaccountable 
grandmother  too  well  for  her  to  persist  in  banishing  the 
kitten.  So  "Duchess  May,"  as  Ethan  insisted  on  calling 
her,  became  an  acknowledged  member  of  the  sooty  circle 
in  the  kitchen,  and  was  well  and  safely  brought  up  without 
the  immediate  superintendence  of  a  cow. 

Mrs.  Gano's  refusal  to  admit  the  Duchess  to  other  parts 
of  the  house  resulted  in  Ethan's  spending  a  good  deal  of 
his  time,  too,  in  Aunt  Jerusha's  society.  She  turned  out 
to  be  a  most  interesting  and  accomplished  person.  No 
wonder  his  father  had  thought  well  of  her,  but  as  to — no, 
he  never,  never  could  have  kissed  her  ! 

Aunt  Jerusha  sang  the  most  wonderful  songs. 

The  words  were  not  very  intelligible  for  the  most  part, 
E  65 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

but  that  didn't  matter  :  the  effect  was  all  the  more  exciting 
and  mysterious.  There  was  one  monotonous  chant  she 
used  solemnly  to  give  forth  when  she  was  polishing  the 
dining-room  table — something  about 

"...  de  body  ob  do  Lawd. 
An'  dat  was  wot  He  meant 
Won  He  said  He'd  brought  a  sword, 
An'  no  mo'  peaoe  on  de  earf !" 

Then  a  string  of  undistinguishable  words,  ending  with 
something  like — 

"Oh.  mighty  keerful 

All  rouu'  de  body  ob  de  Luwd, 

We  done  been  a  wrappin' 

A  w'ite  linen  napkin 

All  round  de  bod}'  ob  de  Lawd. 

He  said  He'd  bring  a  sword, 

An'  no  mo'  peace  on  de  earf  !" 

There  was  a  wild  melancholy  in  the  air  that  made  the 
child's  heart  tremble  in  his  breast.  Particularly  on  wet 
days,  when  he  couldn't  go  down  into  the  wilderness,  he 
used  to  stand  in  the  doorway  with  the  Duchess  in  his  arms, 
listening  with  all  his  ears. 

"An'  Jerusha,"  he  said,  one  morning  during  a  thunder 
storm,  when  she  polished  the  oak  in  persistent  silence, 
"why  don't  you  sing  ?  Grandmamma  can't  hear." 

"Xo,  Massa  Efan,  not  to-day." 

"Why  not?  This  is  just  the  day  to,  when  the  rain's 
makin'  such  a  noise  you  can  sing  as  loud  as  you  like." 

"  Yo'  won't  nebber  ketch  dis  nigger  raisin'  no  chimes  on 
de  twenty-firs'  ob  July." 

"Why  not  ?*' 

"  Don'  you  know,  little  massa,  dis  de  day  yo'  fader 
died  ?" 

"  Oh-h,  is  it  ?"  A  silence  of  some  moments,  broken  only 
by  the  dash  of  summer  rain  against  the  window  -  pane. 
"  Did  you  know  my  father  when  he  was  quite  little  ?*' 

"Law,  yes,  littler'n  you — so  little,  he  couldn't  walk  by 

66 


THE    OTEN    QUESTION 

hisself.  De  firs'  time  I  done  lef  him,  jes'  fur  a  minute, 
standin'  in  de  big  arm-cheer  by  de  winder,  he  turn  roun' 
w'en  he  see  I  wusn't  holdin'  on  t'  him,  an'  he  yelled  like 
forty—  She  chuckled  proudly,  stopped  suddenly,  and 
held  out  timid  arms  and  made  a  baby  face.  "  '  Ow  !  ow  ! 
Efan  fall — Efan  bake!"  She  relaxed  into  smiles  again. 
•'  Break  he  meant,  yo'  see.  He'd  seen  pitchers  and  china 
dolls  and  sich  like  fallin'  and  smashin' ter  bits,  and  he  wus 
'feared  dat's  wot  would  happen  t'  him." 

She  went  on  chuckling  a  moment,  and  then  fell  unac 
countably  to  weeping.  The  thunder  crashed  and  the  wind 
blew  loud.  It  lashed  the  great  tulip-tree  with  fury.  Ethan 
laid  his  face  against  the  velvet  back  of  the  Duchess.  Aunt 
Jerusha  wept  audibly.  Ethan  felt  rather  low  in  his  mind 
himself. 

"  Where  does  this  door  out  here  lead  to  ?"  he  said,  feel 
ing  the  need  of  a  diversion. 

"  Unner  dem  front  stehs." 

"  Oh,  does  it  go  under  the  stairs  ?" 

"  Yes  ;  but  don'  vo'  go  dah,  honey." 

"Why  not  ?" 

"It  ain't  a  berry  cheerin'  kin'  ob  a  place." 

"Dirty  ?" 

"  Spec's  so." 

"  I've  noticed  Venie  always  runs  past  that  door.  It  can't 
be  'cause  it's  dirty." 

"  No,  honey  ;  no." 

"  An' Jerusha,  Venie  told  me  yesterday  when  grandmam 
ma  first  came  here  she  couldn't  get  any  servants  to  sleep  in 
this  house,  and  that  was  why  she  had  to  send  for  Venie." 

"  Don'  3^0'  min'  Venus  ;  she's  misleadin'." 

"Well,  but  I  asked  Mr.  Hall  while  he  was  cutting  the 
grass,  and  he  said  he  wouldn't  like  to  live  here,  and  he 
looked  at  the  house  in  such  a  funny  kind  o'way." 

"  Huh  !  yo'  mus'n't  listen  to  po'  w'ite  trash." 

"  Then  you'd  better  tell  me,  or  I'll  ask  everybody." 

"No,  no,  honey.  Yo'  grandma  would  be  hoppin'  mad 
ef  yo'  should  git  dem  iggorant  pussens  t'  gabbin'  agin." 

67 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  Then  you'd  just  better  tell  me,  and  it'll  be  a  secret, 
please,  An'  Jernsha." 

"Well,  dey  do  say,  Massa  Efan,  dis  yer  house  am 
banted." 

"  Hanted  ?     What's  that  ?" 

Aunt  Jernsha  rolled  her  eyes  cautiously  over  her  shoul 
der  and  lowered  her  voice. 

"Got  ghos'es." 

"Under  the  front  stairs  ?"  whispered  Ethan,  quickly 
withdrawing  from  that  proximity. 

Aunt  Jerusha  nodded. 

"  Did  you  ever  see  one  ?" 

"  Law,  yes  ;  oncet  or  twicet." 

"What  was  it  like  ?" 

"Like  de  debbil  in  a  night-gown.  Hark!  Yo' heah 
dat  ?" 

"Yes;  oh,  what  was  it?"  Ethan  was  nearer  Aunt 
Jerusha  in  his  alarm  than  he  had  ever  ventured  before. 

"  Dat's  de  bad  ghos'  under  de  stehs.  De  fust  fall  we 
come  heah  he  done  groan  and  yro-o-an  like  dat  all  de  time. 
He  been  mighty  still  now  fur  a  spell.  Hark  !  yo'  heah 
dat  ?" 

Ethan  was  horribly  conscious  of  a  hideous  noise  some 
where  in  front  of  the  dining-room. 

"  /  think  he's  in  the  parlor,"  he  whispered,  when  he 
could  command  his  emotions  sufficiently  for  speech. 

"  No,  no  ;  I  used  t'  'spect  he  was  dab,  but  dat's  jus'  his 
being  so  cute,  he  didn'  want  nobody  to  know  he  was  miner 
de  front  stehs.  Come  into  de  kitchen,  Massa  Efan,  and 
I'll  gib  yo'  a  cinnamon  roll." 

It  is  useless  to  pretend  that  Ethan  was  a  stout-hearted 
young  gentleman.  From  infancy  he  had  been  a  prey  to  a 
thousand  unseen  terrors  having  for  the  most  part  quite  re 
spectable  Christian  name  and  origin,  such  as  the  "  worm 
that  dieth  not,"  "the  thief  in  the  night,"  the  "great  red 
dragon"  of  the  Revelation,  and  "the  beast  with  seven 
heads."  But  there  are  some  terrors  that  need  no  inculcat 
ing.  It  occurred  to  him  now  that  the  ghost  under  the  stairs 

68 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

was  called  Yaffti.  Why  ' '  Yaffti  "  he  could  not  have  told, 
or  what  suggested  the  name  to  him ;  but  Yaffti  was  angry 
when  people,  especially  little  boys,  walked  over  his  head 
without  saying : 

"  Yaffti  Makafti,  here  I  am,  you  see  ; 
I'll  be  good  to  you,  if  you'll  be  good  to  me." 

His  worst  form  of  nightmare  was  forgetting  to  use  this 
formula,  and  daring  in  his  purblind  sleep  to  stamp  on  the 
stairs  directly  over  Yaffti's  head.  He  realized  by-and-by 
that  the  restless  spirit  underneath  was  soothed  when  the 
stairs  were  not  used,  and  his  young  friend  made  the  descent 
astride  the  banisters.  This  pleased  all  parties,  except  Mrs. 
Gano.  Next  best,  from  the  Yaffti  point  of  view,  was  walk 
ing  on  the  narrow  green  border  of  the  stair  carpet,  instead 
of  in  the  fawn -colored  centre.  Little  by  little  Yaffti  en 
larged  his  jurisdiction,  and  ruled  the  porches  with  a  des 
potism  as  secret  as  it  was  potent,  permitting  no  child  to 
walk  on  the  cracks  between  the  boards.  Yaffti  was  pleased, 
too,  if  in  going  about  the  town  you  steered  clear  of  the 
cracks  between  the  flag-stones.  But  all  this  attempt  at  a 
friendly  understanding  was  at  bottom  a  mere  daylight 
truce,  and  with  the  coming  on  of  night  the  hollow  mockery 
stood  exposed.  Ethan,  like  many  another,  went  through 
his  childish  terrors  with  a  silent  endurance  that  would  have 
earned  him  the  name  of  hero  had  he  been  a  man,  and  had 
Yaffti  boasted  another  name,  though  not  necessarily  a  more 
demonstrable  existence. 

Nevertheless,  these  were  wonderful  and  beautiful  days, 
having  in  them  a  rapture  of  freedom  from  human  inter 
ference  incompatible  with  life  under  the  same  roof  with 
Aunt  Hannah  and  Grandfather  Tallmadge,  who  seemed  to 
have  nothing  better  to  do  than  to  look  after  Ethan  and 
spoil  his  fun  from  morning  till  night. 


CHAPTER  VI 

Ix  spite  of  Ethan's  somewhat  heathen  faith  in  the  power 
of  Yaffti,  and  the  efficacy  of  rites  and  spells,  he  was  a  true 
Gano,  in  that  he  early  developed  a  deep  concern  about 
Christianity.  During  the  stately  strolls  after  supper  with 
his  grandmother,  lie  propounded  many  a  question  which  so 
taxed  that  practised  theologian  that  she  was  fain  to  turn 
the  conversation  by  quoting  a  question-begging  beatitude, 
or  saying  loftily  the  subject  was  beyond  little  boys.  But 
if,  like  Dr.  Johnson  on  the  immortality  of  the  soul,  she 
sometimes  left  the  matter  in  obscurity,  she  had  a  Bible 
quotation  ready  for  every  conceivable  emergency  in  life. 
Her  ingenuity  in  wresting  from  the  stern  old  Scripture 
humane  and  cheerful  counsel,  fit  for  the  infant  mind  of  a 
conscience-plagued  Gano,  discovered  how  true  was  her  com 
prehension  of  his  fears,  and  how  much  wiser  her  teaching 
all  unconsciously  was  than  that  of  the  creed  she  would 
have  died  for.  Her  own  spiritual  development  had  never 
for  a  moment  been  arrested.  She  had  travelled  farther 
than  she  was  quite  aware,  since  the  days  when  she  had  al 
lowed  her  young  children  to  be  tormented  by  the  fears  of  a 
fiery  hereafter.  She  soon  discovered  that  the  Presbyterian 
Tallmadges  had  done  their  best  to  plant  the  Calvinistic  evil 
in  the  sensitive  mind  of  her  grandson,  and,  without  mis 
giving,  she  proceeded  to  root  it  out. 

"I  don't  see  how  anybody  can  feel  sure  they're  going  to 
be  saved,"  the  child  said,  with  deep  anxiety,  one  Sunday 
evening. 

"  Such  thoughts  are  a  temptation  of  the  Evil  One.  (  O 
thou  of  little  faith,  wherefore  didst  thou  doubt  ?' " 

"But  how  do  I  know  I'm  not  one  of  those  He  meant 

70 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

when  He  said,  'Ye  serpents,  ye  generation  of  vipers,  how 
can  ye  escape  the  damnation  of  hell  ?'  " 

"  Because  our  Saviour  distinctly  says  it  of  that  genera 
tion — centuries  ago — of  rebellious  and  unbelieving  Jews." 

"  Oh-h  !"     He  was  only  half  reassured. 

She  paused  on  the  gravel  walk  and  looked  down  at  him. 
His  little  grave  face  was  upturned  in  the  twilight,  his 
great  eyes  darkened  by  a  world  of  care,  but  he  looked  so 
very  fragile  withal,  such  a  tender  little  baby,  that  she  felt 
her  lips  twitching  at  his  anxiety  lest  he  should  be  the 
viper  of  the  Lord's  denunciation.  In  another  moment  her 
unaccustomed  eyes  were  strangely  wet,  and  she  walked  on 
with  averted  face. 

"  I  can't  help  wondering  often,"  the  child  pursued,  with 
evident  heaviness  of  spirit,  "  how  I  shall  manage  to  be  a 
profitabubble  servant." 

"  A  what  ?" 

"  Well,  not  like  the  wwprofitabubble  servant  that  had  to 
be  cast  into  outer  darkness,  where  there  was  weeping  and 
gnashing — " 

"Nonsense!  all  that  has  nothing  to  do  with  you  !  He 
said,  '  Suffer  little  children  to  come  unto  Me." 

"  You  think,  if  I  died  now,  I'd  go  to  heaven  ?" 

"  Of  course  you  would.    All  little  children  go  to  heaven." 

"  All  children  who  aren't  too  wicked,"  corrected  Ethan, 
gravely,  with  misgiving. 

"  There  is  no  such  thing  as  a  wicked  child,"  interrupted 
his  mentor,  impatiently;  then,  catching  herself  up — "They 
may  be  foolish  and  wayward" — she  looked  down  on  him 
sternly — "and  they  may  have  to  be  severely  punished  on 
this  earth,  but  they  don't  know  enough  to  be  wicked,  not 
enough  to  deserve  being  shut  out  of  heaven." 

"I've  heard  Grandfather  Tallmadge  say  somebody — I 
think  it  was  some  saint — had  seen  " — he  lowered  his  voice 
— "  had  seen  an  infant  in  hell,  a  span  long."  He  shuddered. 

"  Nonsense  !"  retorted  Mrs.  Gano,  angrily.  "  No  saint 
ever  saw  anything  of  the  sort  —  nor  no  sane  creature.  It 
was  that  John  Calvin." 

71 


TIIE    OPEN    QUESTION 

•'  Oh  !  and  you  think  perhaps  he— 

"  He  didn't  know  what  he  was  talking  about.  lie  had  a 
black,  despairing  mind,  and  is  the  only  human  creature 
who  ever  had  any  valid  excuse  for  being  a  Calvinist." 

"  Oh  !•" 

"  I  suppose  they've  not  neglected  in  Boston  to  tell  you 
there  is  such  a  thing  as  *  the  unpardonable  sin7  ?" 

The  ironic  intonation  was  lost  on  Ethan. 

"  Oh  no,"  he  said,  with  the  animation  of  one  who  recog 
nizes  an  old  friend  ;  "  Grandfather  Ta — 

"Now,  never  forget  that  the  only  unpardonable  sin  is  to 
doubt  the  mercy  of  God." 

"Then  you  think  that  when  the  end  of  the  world 
comes — 

"I  think,"  she  interrupted,  with  a  lyrical  swell  in  her 
voice  as  she  remembered  the  prophet's  vision — "  I  know, 
that  'the  ransomed  of  the  Lord  shall  return  and  come  to 
Zion  with  songs  and  everlasting  joys  upon  their  head  ;  they 
shall  obtain  joy  and  gladness,  and  sorrow  and  sighing  shall 
flee  away/  And  now  we've  had  enough  of  that  for  to 
night,"  she  ended,  with  an  abrupt  change  of  voice  and 
style. 

Oddly  enough,  she  was  not  so  likely  to  close  the  subject 
in  this  summary  fashion  if  the  evening  talk  fell  upon 
Ulysses,  or  Peter  the  Great,  or  General  Lee.  It  was  some 
times  Aunt  Valeria  who  had  to  remind  them  of  Ethan's 
bedtime,  if  the  topic  had  chanced  to  be  the  Civil  War,  or 
anyone  of  the  legion  of  family  stories  of  Galverts  or  Ganos 
and  their  doings  in  the  South.  There  was  Ephraim  Gal- 
vert,  who  had  fought  for  the  King  in  1774,  and  when  he 
died  had  left  his  curse  and  his  red  coat  for  "a  sign"  to 
his  rebellious  sons,  who  had  fought  for  independence. 
There  was  that  cousin  Ethan  Gano,  who  had  lost  his  right 
hand,  and  yet  was  such  a  famous  shot  and  swordsman  with 
his  left  that  no  man  dared  stand  up  against  him.  Ilu  had 
made  a  fortune  in  the  India  trade,  by  chance,  as  it  were, 
for  he  never  really  cared  for  anything  but  sword  and  pistol 
practice,  and  would  be  always  talking  of  feats  of  arms, 

72 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

even  to  parsons  and  Quakers.  "  Just  as  that  other  boaster, 
Byron,"  Mrs.  Gano  would  wind  up,  f '  was  forever  telling 
how,  like  Leander,  he  had  swum  the  Hellespont,  and  took 
more  credit  to  himself  for  being  able  to  snuff  out  a  candle 
with  a  pistol-shot  at  twenty  paces  than  for  being  able  to 
write  Childe  Harold.  But  that  was  not  only  because  he 
was  a  poet/'  she  would  add  meditatively  over  Ethan's 
head :  "  it  was  the  direct  result  of  inordinate  vanity  and  a 
club-foot.  Just  as  Ethan  Gano  would  never  have  been  a 
crack  swordsman  if  he  hadn't  been  one-armed  as  well  us 
worldly.'' 

Among  the  minor  advantages  of  life  in  NCAV  Plymouth 
was  that  a  boy  didn't  come  in  for  a  scolding  here  if  he  went 
without  his  cap.  In  common  with  many  children,  Ethan 
hated  head-gear  of  all  kinds,  and  yet  fully  expected  to  be 
scolded,  on  strict  Boston  principles,  the  first  time  he  was 
discovered  hatless  out-of-doors.  Valeria,  wearing  a  wide 
shade-hat,  and  Mrs.  Gano,  with  a  green -lined  umbrella, 
came  unexpectedly  upon  him  one  hot  noon-day  as  he  sat 
reading  bareheaded  in  the  scorching  sun  on  the  terrace 
steps. 

'•'How  like  his  father  that  child  is  !"  said  Mrs.  Gano, 
stopping  and  looking  at  him  as  though  she  saw,  not  him  at 
all,  but  another  boy. 

"  Don't  you  want  your  hat  ?"  asked  Aunt  Valeria. 

"No/'  said  Ethan,  gathering  courage.  "I — I  like  the 
hot  sun/' 

"Isn't  that  like  Shelley  ?"  said  Aunt  Valeria  in  the 
same  way  that  Mrs.  Gano  had  remarked  on  the  likeness  to 
Ethan**  father.  "If  his  curly  hair  wasn't  cropped  so  close, 
his  little  round  head  would  be  exactly  like — " 

"What  are  you  reading  ?"  interrupted  his  grandmother. 

"I'm  studying,"  answered  Ethan,  self-righteously,  and 
he  held  up  his  French  grammar. 

"  Don't  you  do  enough  of  that  in  school  ?"  said  Mrs. 
Gano,  with  what  seemed  strange  lack  of  appreciation  in  a 
grandmother. 

"They  expect  me  to  do  some  work  in  the  holidays." 

73 


TUP:  OPEN  QUESTION 

"  Oh,  they  do,  do  they  ?" 

She  turned  away  indifferently,  as  if  to  continue  her  walk, 
glancing  sharply  down  in  that  familiar  way  of  hers  at  the 
clover  fringing  the  path. 

"Do  you  think  I  needn't  study  ?"  The  child  had  jumped 
up  and  joined  them  as  they  walked  round  the  house.  "You 
see,  I  hate  doing  it  most  awfully/' 

"Not  'awfully/" 

"Yes,  really,  especially  ttre  and  avoir;  but  grandfather 
says — 

"  I  notice  you  use  that  word  '  awfully '  a  great  deal.  Do 
you  know  what  it  means  ?" 

Ethan  preserved  an  embarrassed  silence. 

"  Awful  means  that  which  inspires  awe.  Now,  your  feel 
ing  about  French  grammar  does  not  inspire  awe.  French 
is  all  very  well,  but  it's  a  good  thing  sometimes  to  consider 
your  English.  You  couldn't  have  a  better  task  than  that 
in  the  holidays." 

"Shall  I  carry  your  coat?''  said  the  child,  willing  to 
change  the  topic,  and  laying  his  hand  on  the  thin  wrap  she 
had  on  her  arm. 

"  This,"  said  his  grandmother,  with  the  Tallmadge  in 
sistence  on  French  still  rankling,  apparently — "  this  is  not 
a  '  cut,'  as  you  call  it ;  and  that  person  approaching  is  not 
walking  in  the  <rud.'  You  are  losing  some  of  your  twang, 
but  thy  speech  still  bewrayeth  thee.  Perhaps  learning  to 
talk  like  a  Gano,  since  you  are  one,  would  be  a  fitting  task 
for  the  holidays  here.  Say  'co-o-at.'"  He  repeated  the 
word  in  a  shamefaced  way.  "Now  'road.'  Yes,  that's 
right."  She  drew  back  suddenly  and  faced  about.  "  Some 
one's  coming  in  !"  she  whispered,  hurriedly,  as  who  should 
say  "  An  enemy  is  at  the  gate." 

She  stalked  behind  the  house  with  Ethan  at  her  side, 
while  Aunt  Valeria  went  forward  and  greeted  the  visitor. 

"Why,  it's  the  same  gentleman  who  has  been  here  twice 
before,"  Ethan  observed,  looking  back. 

"  Are  you  .sure  9"  said  Mrs.  Gano,  stopping  short.  "  Was 
that  Tom  Rockingham  ayain  ?" 

74 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  I  don't  know  his  name/'  answered  Ethan,  wondering 
what  awful  sin  Tom  Rockingham  could  have  committed. 

"  Little,  insignificant-looking  man  ?"  demanded  his  grand 
mother. 

"He  wasn't  very  big,"  admitted  the  child.  "It's  the 
one  that  walked  home  from  church,  as  far  as  the  corner, 
with  Aunt  Valeria  and  me  last  Sunday." 

"Upon  my  word!"  she  ejaculated.  "Has  Tom  Rock- 
ingham  begun  that  ?" 

"  I  didn't  hear  his  name." 

"A  man"  —  she  made  a  gesture  of  contempt  —  "very 
careless  about  his  linen  ?" 

"I  didn't  notice." 

" — without  gloves  ?     Hands  rather  grimy — " 

"  Aunt  Valeria  said  he  was  a  great  scholar." 

"  A  great  fiddlestick!    Of  course  it's  Tom  Rockingham." 

This  was  evidently  a  most  exciting  character,  and  in  any 
case  it  was  pleasant  to  have -a  visitor  who  didn't  merely 
leave  cards  and  go  away,  as  all  the  others  did. 

"  Aren't  we  going  in  to  see  him  ?" 

"No,  certainly  not,  unless  he  stays  too  long." 

She  threw  back  her  head  in  that  way  of  hers.  They 
walked  up  and  down  the  back  veranda  in  silence,  Ethan 
as  well  aware  as  if  she  had  poured  forth  torrents  that  his 
grandmother's  ire  was  growing  with  every  moment.  Pres 
ently  she  dropped  his  hand,  and  going  to  the  door,  she 
called,  in  an  unmistakable  tone  : 

"Valeria!—  Valeria!" 

"Yes,  mother,  in  a  moment,"  came  from  the  direction 
of  the  parlor. 

Mrs.  Gano  waited  for  some  seconds  with  sparkling  eyes, 
then  : 

"  Valeria,  I  have  called  yon  !" 

Ethan  was  hot  and  cold  with  excitement. 

"  Run  away  and  play,"  said  his  grandmother,  her  gleam 
ing  eyes  falling  on  a  sudden  upon  the  child.  She  turned 
sharply  and  went  in-doors,  leaving  Ethan  to  wonder  which 
she  was  going  to  kill — Tom  Rockingham  or  Aunt  Valeria. 

75 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

He  stood  quite  still,  waiting  for  developments.  At  last, 
unable  to  bear  the  combined  suspense  and  solitude  any 
longer,  he  pulled  the  Duchess  out  from  the  cool  shade  un 
der  the  veranda,  and  sat  down  with  her  on  the  step. 

Presently  Aunt  Valeria  came  out  of  the  parlor  and  went 
up-stairs.  He  didn't  see  her  face. 

With  a  vague,  frightened  feeling,  he  got  up  with  the 
Duchess  in  his  arms  and  walked  away. 

Mr.  Rockingham  never  came  again,  and  the  only  refer 
ence  ever  made  to  him  was  weeks  afterwards,  when  the 
summer  was  waning,  and  he  passed  by  the  house  one  even 
ing  without  a  word,  without  a  pause,  taking  off  his  hat  to 
the  ladies  who  sat  in  the  dusk  on  the  front  porch. 

"  Who  is  that  ?"  Mrs.  Gano  asked  her  daughter. 

"Mr.  Rockingham.*' 

"Humph  !*'  remarked  Mrs.  Gano. 

Aunt  Valeria  said  nothing. 

Ethan  laid  his  cheek  against  her  slim,  white  hand.  But 
she  didn't  seem  to  him  to  know  or  to  care  for  a  little  boy's 
sympathy.  It  was  natural,  he  thought,  that  he  should 
care  so  much  more  for  these  relations  than  they  did  for 
him.  The  holidays  were  ended  —  so  Grandfather  Tall- 
madge  had  written — and  a  French  boy,  a  kind  of  cousin, 
had  come  to  live  at  Ashburton  Place  and  go  to  school  with 
Ethan.  "  So  now  he  would  have  a  playmate,"  Aunt  Han 
nah  had  added,  as  a  postscript.  Ethan  didn't  want  a  play 
mate,  and  he  was  horribly  shy  of  a  boy  who  knew  French 
by  a  superior  instinct.  But  to-morrow  he  was  to  go  back 
to  Boston.  No  help  for  it. 

Many  letters  on  this  subject  had  been  written  ;  it  was  all 
no  use.  He  had  to  go,  and  his  grandmother's  eyes  were 
angry  when  the  subject  was  mentioned,  and  his  own  heart 
heavy  and  sore  in  his  breast.  Aunt  Valeria  had  never  said 
anything,  but  she  was  even  kinder  to  him  after  the  de 
cision,  especially  at  dusk,  when  one  felt  dreary.  Mrs. 
Gano  would  seldom  allow  even  the  hall  lamp  to  be  lighted 
in  the  summer  evenings,  probably  from  motives  of  econ 
omy  ;  but  this  reason  was  never  given  for  any  mandate  ex- 

76 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

cept  under  great  pressure.  The  ostensible  end  served  by 
sitting  in  the  dusk  and  groping  one's  way  up-stairs,  or  be 
ing  beholden  to  the  moon  for  acting  as  the  domestic  can 
dle,  was  that  if  darkness  reigned  mosquitoes  and  miller- 
moths  were  not  attracted  into  the  house  ;  neither  were 
those  great  winged  things  with  horns,  that  one  never  saw 
in  Boston,  which  fact  would  have  compensated  Ethan  for 
endurance  of  the  dark  if  anything  could.  In  the  moments 
preceding  bedtime,  the  firefly  had  been  a  distinct  con 
solation.  That  very  morning  he  had  hid  Aunt  Valeria's 
empty  cut-glass  camphor-bottle  under  the  syringa-bush, 
and  now  was  the  time  to  try  the  experiment  of  bottling  a 
few  fireflies  and  seeing  how  they  lightened  their  captivity. 
He  sallied  forth  into  the  scented  dusk,  whistling  softly. 
His  plan  worked  wondrous  well.  With  each  new  victim 
his  spirits  mounted  higher,  he  thinking  —  poor  deluded 
soul  ! — that  he  should  never  again  feel  downhearted  in  the 
dusk.  He  had  caught  and  imprisoned  over  a  dozen  of 
these  winged  lamps,  when  Aunt  Valeria  came  through  the 
bushes,  calling  softly  : 

"  Ethan  !  Ethan  !" 

"  Yes  ;  here  I  am." 

He  concealed  her  camphor-bottle  as  well  as  he  could  un 
der  his  jacket,  but  the  bottle  was  big  and  the  jacket  was 
small. 

"  Bedtime,"  called  the  voice. 

"Just  a  few  more  fire — I  mean  minutes/' 

"No  ;  your  grandmother  says  it  is  past  the  time." 

"  Oh,  dear  !  then  I  s'pose  it  is."  He  came  out  of  his 
covert,  and  on  a  sudden  impulse  added,  hurriedly  :  "Aunt 
Valeria,  do  you  care  about  your  camphor-bottle  ?" 

"  Care  about  it  ?" 

"  Yes  ;  do  you  mind  if  there's  fireflies  in  it  instead  of 
camphor  ?" 

He  held  it  up,  and  the  captives  lit  their  pale  lamps  and 
fluttered  despairingly. 

"  Oh,  my  dear  !  they'll  die." 

"  No  ;  they  like  it.     It's  such  a  beautiful  bottle." 

77 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  But  you've  got  the  glass  stopper  in  ;  they  can't  breathe." 

In  spite  of  his  entreating,  she  took  out  the  stopper,  and 
put  the  end  of  her  lace  scarf  over  the  opening. 

"  You  won't  take  it  away  from  me  ?" 

"  No,  no,"  she  said,  gently  leading  him  back  to  the 
front  porch,  repeating  as  she  went : 

"  '  The  shooting  stars  attend  thee, 
And  the  elves  also, 
Whose  little  eyes  glow 
Like  the  sparks  of  lire,  befriend  thee.'" 

"It  isn't  their  little  eyes  that  glow;  it's  their  little  tails," 
said  Ethan,  with  his  nose  flattened  against  the  camphor- 
bottle. 

When  they  got  near  the  porch,  the  prudent  young  gen 
tleman  took  off  his  coat,  and  wrapped  the  bottle  from  the 
too  inquiring  gaze  of  his  grandmother.  Aunt  Valeria  was 
in  a  kind  of  dream,  and  didn't  seem  to  notice. 

"What  a  perfect  evening  !"  she  half  whispered,  looking 
up  through  the  trees. 

"  Good-night,"  said  Ethan  to  his  grandmother,  trying  to 
get  through  the  ceremony  and  hold  his  coat  round  the 
bottle  on  Aunt  Valeria's  arm  at  the  same  time. 

"  Forty-eight  years  to-day,"  she  went  on  to  her  mother, 
"since  Shelley's  body  was  burned  on  the  sands  at  Via- 
reggio." 

"  Ah,  yes,"  returned  the  other,  speaking  very  gently. 
"Good-night,  child." 

"What!  Is  he  dead?"  said  Ethan,  feeling  a  double 
shock. 

"Yes,  dear;  he's  dead." 

And  he  and  Aunt  Valeria  went  up-stairs  in  the  dark. 

"  You  never  told  me,"  said  the  child,  when  they  had 
passed  Yaffti  in  safety.  "I  s'pose  Byron's  all  right,"  he 
added,  remembering  allusions  to  that  person's  physical 
prowess. 

"Byron's  dead,  too,"  said  Aunt  Valeria,  sadly,  "and 
Keats — poor  Keats  !" 

78 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"All  dead!" 

They  had  been  referred'  to  as  if  they  lived  in  the  next 
street.  If  it  had  been  Shelley  who  had  come  to  make 
them  a  visit,  it  would  have  seemed  as  natural — more  nat 
ural  than  the  apparition  of  Tom  Rockingham  or  the  ob 
jectionable  Uncle  Elijah. 

"  I'll  get  a  piece  of  net  to  put  over  the  bottle  while  you 
undress,"  said  Aunt  Valeria. 

When  she  came  back  Ethan  was  in  bed. 

"What  relation  was  Shelley  to  me  ?"  he  asked,  welcom 
ing  the  camphor-bottle  to  his  arms. 

"Relation  ?     None." 

"  oh-h  r 

These  tilings  were  obscure.  The  Tallmadges,  for  in 
stance,  weren't  related  to  Grandmamma  Gano,  so  she  had 
said  with  emphasis. 

"  Then  what  relation  was  Shelley  to  yon  9" 

"No  relation  at  all,  dear.     He  was  an  English  poet." 

"  You  mean  he  wasn't  even  born  in  America  ?" 

Ethan  sat  up  straight  in  his  bed. 

"  He  was  born  far  away  in  England,"  said  Aunt  Valeria, 
dreamily. 

"An'  dead  an'  burnt?" 

"Yes." 

"And  never  was  no  relation  to  any  of  us  ?" 

"No." 

"Oh-h!" 

He  lay  back  on  his  pillow,  conscious  of  a  new  loneli 
ness — of  being  bereft  of  something  he  had  counted  his. 
Yes  ;  it  was  just  as  if  some  one  belonging  to  him  had 
died. 

After  Aunt  Valeria  had  told  him  why  they  had  burned 
Shelley's  body,  and  even  after  she  had  repeated  all  his  fa 
vorite  poems,  a  sense  of  loss  remained. 

She  thought  he  was  asleep  when  she  kissed  him  good 
night.  But  he  stirred  and  gave  a  little  sigh. 

"  Well,  I'm  glad  I've  got  my  fireflies,  anyhow,"  he  mur 
mured. 

70 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

His  leave-taking  next  morning  was  extremely  harrowing 
to  his  own  feelings,  however  austerely  the  rest  took  it.  He 
wept  freely  after  breakfast  down  under  the  barberry-bush, 
but  he  promised  himself  he  would  get  it  all  done  down 
there  in  the  blessed  privacy  of  the  wilderness,  and  not 
cry  another  tear  after  he  got  back  to  the  house.  He  had 
made  a  tour  the  moment  he  was  dressed,  saying  good-bye 
to  everything.  Now  there  was  nothing  left  but  An'  Jeru- 
sha  and  the  family.  Uncle  Elijah  might  come  any  min 
ute.  He  dried  his  eyes,  and  crept  back  through  the  rank 
undergrowth  to  the  terrace,  went  heavily  up  the  two  flights 
of  stone  steps,  saying  good-bye  again  to  the  flag  lilies  and 
the  crooked  catalpa  and  the  tulip-tree,  and  so  on  sedately 
round  the  house  to  the  kitchen.  On  his  appearance,  An' 
Jerusha  rushed  towards  him  with  wide-spread,  motherly 
arms,  but  observing  his  involuntary  recoil,  she  stood  still, 
looking  at  him  with  unlessened  affection. 

"  Good-bye,  An'  Jerusha,"  he  said,  holding  her  hand 
tight  in  both  his  own. 

"  Good-bye,  honey.     Be  suah  yon  come  agin  soon." 

"  Yes,  I  mean  to  ;  and  thank  you  for  all  the  songs  and 
the  cinnamon  rolls." 

"  Law,  honey  !  jes'  listen  to  de  chile." 

She  turned  away  to  Verne  with  an  attempt  at  a  chuckle, 
but  the  tears  had  started  down  her  cheeks. 

"Good-bye." 

Ethan  shook  hands  with  the  smiling  Venus. 

"  Maw  and  me  done  put  yo'  in  a  Johnny-cake,"  she  said, 
an  outsider  might  have  thought  enigmatically. 

"Thank  you,"  said  Ethan,  tremulously — "thank  you 
both,  awfully." 

"  Dat's  de  do' -bell,  an'  Massa  Efan's  knocker,"  said 
Aunt  Jerusha,  sniffing  violently.  "  You  go,  Venus ;  I 
ain't  'spectabel." 

"  Oh,  it's  my  uncle,"  said  Ethan,  rather  relieved  at  the 
interruption  ;  and  he  hurried  after  Venus,  feeling,  how 
ever,  deeply  dissatisfied  with  his  leave  -  taking  of  An' 
Jerusha. 

80 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

She  had  been  so  awfully  kind — it  was  useless  to  pretend 
there  was  any  other  way  of  putting  it — and  she  had  cared 
so  much  for  his  father.  Ought  he  to  have  kissed  her  ?  It 
was  plain  she  had  expected  it.  It  was  all  very  uncom 
fortable  and  heart-achy. 

Now  he  was  in  the  hall,  arid  Uncle  Elijah  was  there,  and 
so  was  grandmamma,  being  very  stiff  to  poor  Uncle  Eli 
jah.  Aunt  Valeria  came  down-stairs,  and  the  good-byes 
were  said.  Uncle  Elijah's  hack  was  at  the  door,  and 
Ethan's  trunk  was  being  carried  out. 

Suddenly,  at  the  very  last,  "  Come  here  a  moment/' 
said  his  grandmother,  retreating  into  her  own  long  room. 

Ethan  followed,  quaking.  Had  he  been  doing  some 
thing  wrong  ?  And  yet  she  had  just  kissed  him  good-bye 
so  kindly.  As  she  turned  and  faced  him,  he  saw  her  eyes 
were  full  of  tears.  lie  could  hardly  believe  his  senses,  but 
he  began  to  cry,  too. 

"  I  do  wish  I  was  going  to  stay  with  you,"  he  said,  break 
ing  down  and  forgetting  his  fears. 

"You  will  come  back  to  me,"  she  said  ;  and  she  put  her 
arms  round  him,  and  held  him  close  to  her  for  a  moment, 
while  he  cried  silently  against  her  white  veil,  thinking  the 
while  she  wouldn't  like  it  when  she  discovered  it  was  wet. 

"  Don't  you  think,"  he  faltered,  as  she  released  him — 
"  couldn't  this  be  my  home  ?" 

"  Of  course,  it  is  your  home.  Isn't  your  name  on  the 
front  door  ?" 

"Oh  yes,"  he  said,  smiling  through  his  tears;  "I  forgot 
that,"  and  the  remembrance  seemed  to  give  him  confidence 
in  the  future. 

Mrs.  Gano  was  looking  hastily  about  for  some  excuse  for 
bringing  him  into  the  room. 

"  Here  is  a  book  that  belonged  to  your  great-grandfather, 
called  Plutarch's  Lives.  You  will  read  it  when  you  are 
older,  and  remember  it  was  my  parting  present  after  your 
first  visit." 

"  Oh,  thank  you,"  he  said,  brushing  his  sleeve  across  his 
eyes  ;  and  they  went  out,  and  Ethan  got  into  the  carriage. 

81 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  Oh,  dear  me,  my  fireflies  !"  he  shouted,  suddenly,  as  the 
driver  was  closing  the  door.  "  I  shall  need  them  so  awful 
ly—I  mean  so  pertickly— in  Boston  ";  and  he  scrambled  out 
and  rushed  up  to  his  bedroom. 

"What  does  the  child  mean  ?"  asked  Mrs.  Gano. 

"  It's  all  right,"  said  Aunt  Valeria;  "something  I  gave 
him.  Fll  tell  you  afterwards." 

Ethan  came  tumbling  down-stairs  in  the  buff  middle  of 
the  carpet — anywhere,  indifferent  for  once  to  Yaffti  and 
his  possible  revenge. 

"  Good-bye,"  he  called  back  from  the  carriage-window. 
"Thank  you,  ma'am,  for  Plutarch." 

"Keep  him  covered,"  was  Mrs.  Gano's  unemotional  re 
joinder  as  they  drove  away. 

Ethan  sank  back  breathless,  clutching  the  camphor-bot 
tle  under  his  coat. 

"Tired?"  asked  Uncle  Elijah,  looking  at  the  flushed 
little  face.  Ethan  nodded  "Yes,  sir." 

"You  needn't  have  hurried  so;  there's  oceans  of  time. 
But  I  thought  we  could  wait  just  as  well  at  the  sta 
tion." 

They  were  not  going  the  way  Ethan  had  been  driven 
that  day  of  his  arrival,  so  long,  long  ago,  at  the  beginning 
of  the  summer.  He  leaned  forward  excitedly. 

"  Why,  he's  taking  us  round  by  the  Wilderness  !" 

"  The  what  ?:  Uncle  Elijah  looked  out.  "  Moses !  they 
do  let  things  run  wild  here." 

Ethan's  quick  eye  had  sought  out  the  spot  where,  hid 
den  in  that  tangle,  was  a  little  clearing  and  a  "heavenly 
secret-house,"  with  a  barberry-bush  for  a  roof.  But  no 
hint  of  such  a  matter  to  the  profane  passer-by  ! 

What  was  that  ?  His  heart  gave  a  great  jump.  Why,  it 
was  An' Jerusha  on  the  lower  terrace  watching  to  see  them 
go  by  !  She  stood  there  alone,  and  now  she  was  putting 
her  apron  up  to  her  eyes.  Nobody  else  was  looking  after 
the  carriage  from  this  side.  It  was  plain,  for  all  his  grand 
mother's  momentary  melting,  it  was  An'  Jerusha  who  had 
felt  the  parting  most,  and  he  had  refused  to  kiss  her  ! 

82 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  Uncle  Elijah,"  said  the  child,  hurriedly,  "  do  yon 
mind,  if  we've  got  such  a  lot  of  time,  Fd  like  to  get  a  bar 
berry  leaf  for  my  fire-flies.  Please  stop  !"  he  called  out  of 
the  window  to  the  coachman. 

And  while  Uncle  Elijah  was  saying,  ''What — what? — 
barberry  leaves,  fire-flies  ?  What  nonsense  is  this  you've 
been  learning  ?"  Ethan  had  jumped  out  of  the  slowing 
vehicle,  made  a  frantic  sign  to  An'  Jerusha,  run  up  to  the 
fence,  pushed  aside  a  loose  picket  of  his  acquaintance,  and 
dashed  into  the  wilderness.  There  was  nothing  for  Uncle 
Elijah  to  do  but  to  wait.  The  child  had  vanished  without 
a  trace  ;  by  the  time  Mr.  Tallmadge  had  adjusted  his  spec 
tacles  on  his  nose  he  couldn't  even  find  the  place  where  his 
nephew  had  disappeared.  The  eminent  Bostonian  sat  fum 
ing  while  Ethan  was  feverishly  making  his  way  to  An' 
Jerusha. 

"  Come  down  I"  he  called,  when  he  got  near  the  bottom 
of  the  terrace.  "  Come  towards  the  barberry-bush,  An7 
Jerusha — quick,  quick  !" 

Her  eyes  rolling  wildly  with  amazement  and  concern, 
Jerusha  penetrated  a  few  paces  into  the  jungle. 

"  Wha  is  yo',  honey  ?  Wot's  de  matter  ?  Air  yo'  hurt, 
my  honey  ?  Jes'  wait;  An'  Jerusha's  comin'." 

"  Oh,  here  I  am,"  gasped  the  child,  and  he  precipitated 
himself  into  her  arms.  "I  forgot  to  kiss  you  good-bye,  An' 
Jerusha,  and  I  had  to  come  back." 

He  shut  his  eyes  and  held  his  breath  while  she  kissed 
him,  muttering  prayers  and  blessings. 

"Good-bye,  An'  Jerusha,"  he  said.  "I  sha'n't  ever  for 
get  you  ;"  and  he  tore  his  way  back  through  the  rank  grass 
es,  the  mulleins  and  sunflowers,  catching  his  feet  in  the 
briers,  and  saying  to  himself:  "Oh,  I'm  quite  sure  my 
father  never,  never  did.  But  for  me  it's  different ;  I'm  glad 
I  went  back." 

He  stripped  a  handful  of  leaves  and  coral  berries  off  the 
barberry-bush  as  he  passed,  pushed  back  the  loose  picket, 
and  reappeared  all  over  burrs  and  pollen  before  Uncle  Eli 
jahs'  astonished  and  unapproving  eyes. 

88 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"I've  got  plenty  of  leaves  for  my  fire-flies/'  was  his  greet 
ing,  as  he  clambered  into  the  hack,  ''but  I  must  get  some 
water  for  them  at  the  station.  How  many  years  should  you 
say  a  fire-fly  would  live,  Uncle  Elijah,  with  plenty  to  "eat 
and  drink  ?" 


CHAPTER  VII 

was  not  allowed  to  repeat  his  visit,  and  life  went 
on  for  several  years  without  incident  at  the  old  Fort.  Yet, 
since  "it  is  in  the  soul  that  things  happen,"  these  were 
stirring  times.  One  shrinks  from  inquiring  too  closely  into 
what  the  years  held  for  the  two  eager-hearted  women  shut 
up  there  with  those  perilous  companions,  thwarted  hope, 
stunted  ambition,  and  pent-up  energy.  Well  had  it  been 
for  Valeria  had  she  not  possessed  that  small,  cramped  com 
petency.  If  the  girl  had  had  to  earn  her  living,  she  might 
have  found  peace,  if  not  great  gladness,  in  wholesome  grap 
pling  with  the  material  things-  of  life.  But  in  saying  so 
one  forgets  that  all  this  was  thirty  years  ago,  when  a  pen 
niless  Southern  woman  who  had  a  brother,  or  even  some 
distant  relation,  to  support  her,  no  more  dreamed  of  get 
ting  her  own  bread  than  she  does  to-day  of  going  before 
the  mast. 

Meantime,  with  John  Gano  things  for  a  while  went  bet 
ter.  At  the  end  of  four  years  of  uninterrupted  toil,  such 
years  of  all  work  and  no  play  as  only  an  American  will  put 
up  with,  he  was  able  to  offer  his  cousin  the  kind  of  home 
he  had  set  his  heart  on.  They  were  married  in  the  South, 
and  after  a  brief  visit  to  Mrs.  Gano,  John  took  his  bride  to 
New  York.  Ten  months'  happiness,  followed  by  the  birth 
of  a  daughter,  whom  they  named  Valeria,  and  called  Val  ; 
then  protracted  ill-health  and  a  yearly  baby  for  the  young 
mother,  money  troubles  and  killing  work  for  John  Gano. 

The  distance  between  New  York  and  New  Plymouth  was 
too  great  to  admit  of  much  visiting  back  and  forth  on  triv 
ial  grounds  for  people  of  limited  means.  But  young  Mrs. 
Gano  was  not  expected  to  live  after  the  birth  of  her  fourth 

85 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

child,  and  her  "aunt-mother-in-law"  was  sent  for.  The 
elder  Mrs.  Gano  stayed  till  the  danger  was  past,  and,  as 
she  wrote  home  to  her  daughter,  "  to  relieve  Virginia  a  lit 
tle  of  the  pressure  of  existence,"  she  had  made  up  her 
mind  to  bring  back  Emmeline  with  her  to  the  Fort.  Em- 
meline  was  the  younger  of  the  two  little  girls,  and  that  was 
the  reason  given  for  her  having  been  chosen  instead  of  Val, 
since,  with  a  new  baby  in  the  house,  a  child  of  fourteen 
months  was  more  of  a  charge  on  its  mother's  mind  even 
than  an  enterprising  young  person  of  four.  But  it  was 
presently  revealed  that  Emmeline  was  by  far  the  more  at 
tractive  child,  gentle,  charming,  and  very  beautiful  to  look 
upon  ;  rather  like  her  cousin  Ethan,  whose  loss  was  still 
mourned  silently  at  the  old  Fort.  There  was  no  further 
visiting  between  the  two  houses  until  the  following  winter, 
when  Valeria's  health  broke  down.  Mrs.  Gano  would  not 
hear  it  said  that  her  daughter  was  dying  of  consumption. 

"  I've  had*  a  cough  myself  for  half  a  century.  Consump 
tion  ?  Nonsense!  Valeria- had  undermined  her  constitu 
tion  by  too  much  study  and  a  too  sedentary  life.  What 
was  to  be  expected  when  one  remembered  the  hours  she 
kept !  But  there  !  no  Gano  could  ever  do  anything  with 
moderation." 

However,  the  jealous  mother  was  alarmed  at  last,  and 
admitted  that  what  Valeria  needed  was  a  change. 

"No,"  said  the  old-young  woman ;  "I  have  reached  the 
end." 

A  journey  to  the  Adirondacks  was  proposed.  Valeria 
refused  to  fall  in  with  the  plan. 

"You  wouldn't  let  me  go  away  when  it  would  have  been 
some  use,"  she  said  ;  "leave  me  in  peace  now." 

A  horrible  fear  clutched  at  the  resolute  heart  of  the 
mother  as  she  took  fresh  and  sudden  note  of  the  wasted 
frame,  the  languid,  long,  transparent  hands,  the  far-away 
vision  of  the  eyes. 

"No,  I  wouldn't  let  you  go  alone  and  unprotected.  But 
now  that  John  and  his  wife  are  settled  in  New  York  it's  a 
different  story  altogether.  You  can  stay  with  them,  and— 

86 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

and  study  sculpture  for  a  while/'  she  added,  with  a  visible 
effort. 

Valeria  shook  her  head.  Bat  there  was  a  new  light  in 
the  hollow  eyes.  Little  by  little  she  was  seen  to  be  in 
reality  feverishly  bent  on  availing  herself  of  her  mother's 
late  concession.  Mrs.  Gano  was  as  good  as  her  word.  She 
put  no  further  obstacle  in  the  way,  and,  though  it  was  the 
depth  of  winter,  took  the  long  journey  with  her  daughter, 
arriving  at  her  son's  house  much  exhausted,  to  find  Mrs. 
John  ill  in  bed,  a  mutiny  among  the  servants,  and  a  scene 
of  inexpressible  confusion  and  disorder,  in  the  midst  of 
which  stood  Val,  turbulent  and  triumphant.  Nor  did  she 
budge  upon  the  usually  subduing  apparition  of  Mrs.  Gano. 
Dirty  and  neglected,  an  impudent  little  face  with  bold 
gray  eyes  looking  out  from  a  wild  swirl  of  tawny  hair, 
there  she  stood  in  the  middle  of  the  untidy  dining-room, 
aided  and  abetted  in  some  unspeakable  enormity  by  the 
mere  presence  of  her  faithful  ally,  a  huge  St.  Bernard  dog. 

"My  patience!"  exclaimed  Mrs.  Gano,  surveying  the 
scene. 

"  Why,  it's  my  dear  little  namesake,"  said  Aunt  Valeria, 
with  a  kind  of  gentle  incredulity,  as  she  moved  forward. 

Her  dear  little  namesake  retreated,  dragging  the  great 
dog  back  with  her  by  the  collar. 

"  T licit  my  granddaughter  !" 

Mrs.  Gano  spoke  with  mixed  emotion,  and  hurriedly  put 
on  her  spectacles. 

"My  darling,"  said  Aunt  Valeria,  watching  the  dog  with 
the  tail  of  her  eye,  "  come  and  kiss  me." 

The  child  stared  solemnly  without  moving  a  muscle. 

"  Come,  my  dear,  and  speak  to  your  grandmother." 

Mrs.  Gano  advanced  with  majesty  till  she  was  arrested 
by  a  low  growl  from  the  St.  Bernard. 

"  Don't  be  afraid  of  us,"  urged  Aunt  Valeria,  somewhat 
superfluously.  "  I've  brought  you  a  pretty  toy  in  my 
trunk.  Come,  darling." 

The  child  kept   a   suspicious   eye   on   the  ingratiating 


stranger. 


87 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  She  has  very  pretty  hair,"  pursued  Aunt  Valeria, 
amiably. 

"She  hasn't  pretty  manners,"  retorted  Mrs.  Gano. 

"Oh,  she's  shy.  Don't  be  afraid  of  us" — she  ventured 
a  step  nearer.  "  Come  here,  my  sweet  little  one." 

Never  taking  her  eyes  off  her  gentle  aunt,  the  sweet 
little  one  said,  with  a  charming  childish  lisp  : 

"  Ef  yer  don't  be  thtil,  I'll  thick  my  dawg  on  yer." 

The  two  ladies  fell  back  appalled. 

"Turn  that  great  animal  out  of  doors,"  said  Mrs.  Gano, 
in  awful  tones,  to  the  cook.  But  Katie  O'Flynn  shrank 
visibly  from  availing  herself  of  this  kind  permission. 

"Sure,  mum,  he'd  have  the  heart  out  of  me  ;  and  that's 
just  what  Miss  Val  would  like,  be  the  Howly  Mother  !" 

"  This  is  beyond  everything,"  said  Mrs.  Gano,  more  non 
plussed  than  she  had  often  found  herself.  "The  child 
must  be  out  of  her  senses.  We  will  go  up  to  your  mis 
tress,"  she  said  to  Katie  O'Flynn.  "If  you  were  my 
daughter,"  she  added,  solemnly,  looking  back  at  the  im 
movable  one,  "  I  should  know  how  to  deal  with  you.  As 
it  is,  I'll  leave  you  to  your  father." 

But  leaving  Val  to  her  father  proved  a  less  drastic  meas 
ure  than  Mrs.  Gano  anticipated.  Whether  because  of  his 
sentiment  about  the  first-born — offspring  of  that  only  year 
of  happiness  and  hope — or  merely  because  her  wildness 
was  a  distraction  in  his  brief  moments  of  respite  from 
crushing  cares,  at  all  events,  he  looked  upon  the  child  with 
a  lenient  eye.  He  had  her  much  about  him  when  he  was 
at  home,  smiled  at  recitals  of  her  escapades,  and  called 
her  his  amiable  firebrand,  never  in  the  least  realizing  that 
the  overflow  of  animal  spirits,  which  in  rare  hours  of  ease 
were  his  diversion  and  delight,  might  be  to  others  a  chronic 
bewilderment,  and  a  not  infrequent  torment. 

"Her  mother,"  said  the  elder  Mrs.  Gano,  not  thorough 
ly  understanding  the  situation — "  her  mother  has  utterly 
spoiled  the  child." 

"  No,  no,"  said  John  Gano,  smiling.  "  Val  was  born  like 
that.  I've  never  known  anybody  with  such  high  spirits." 

88 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  'Spirits  ?'  Nonsense  !  Fever.  And  you,  every  one  of 
you  help  to  aggravate  her  unnatural  activity  of  mind  and 
body.  Meanwhile,  my  advice  to  you  is  :  Don't  make  an 
idol  of  your  eldest  daughter.  It's  bad  enough  in  the  case 
of  a  boy,  but  no  girl  survives  it." 

Mrs.  Gano  returned  home  with  little  loss  of  time.  Her 
daughter-in-law's  higgledy-piggledy  house -keeping,  the 
"slackness"  that  was  not  all  ill-health,  coupled  with  the 
ubiquitous  and  unquiet  presence  of  Val,  made  the  elder 
lady  long  for  her  peaceful  home  in  the  West.  Her  going 
left  behind  a  memory  of  awe  and  a  vivid  sense  of  relief. 

Valeria  the  elder,  with  improved  health,  or  else  strung 
up  to  a  semblance  of  it  by  the  potent  ghost  of  a  dear  am 
bition,  began  her  studies  in  art.  She  took  out  a  -course  of 
lessons  in  modelling  at  the  Cooper  Institute. 

The  story  of  those  months  may  not  be  written  here.  We 
will  not  dog  her  through  her  days  of  disillusionment,  her 
shrinking  from  the  curiosity  of  the  students,  her  amaze 
ment  at  their  facility,  her  heart -sinking  at  their  youth. 
As  the  weeks  went  on  the  teacher,  an  Italian  of  fine  and 
gentle  countenance,  looked  at  her  far  more  often  than  he 
looked  at  her  work  ;  and  yet  it  was  observed  by  the  merci 
less  young  crew  in  the  studio  that  her  blundering  attempts 
were  inspected  with  an.  interest  and  frequency  not  bestowed 
on  their  more  creditable  efforts. 

Signer  Conti  leaned  over  her  one  day,  speaking  kindly 
phrases  in  broken  English  about  the  new  attempt  she  was 
making. 

"  Don't  !  don't,  please !"  she  said,  on  a  sudden  impulse. 
"Understand  that  at  least  I  know  it's  bad." 

"  Oh,  it  will  be  better,"  he  answered,  gently. 

"  No,"  she  said,  very  low,  "it  will  never  be  much  better. 
I've  waited  too  long." 

"You  must  not  feel  discouraged."  He  leaned  lower  and 
spoke  under  his  breath.  "You  may  yet  find  great  happi 
ness  by  means  of  your  art." 

She  shook  her  head,  and  when  she  could  steady  her  voice 
said  : 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"I'm  going  home." 

The  man's  face  changed. 

"  You  will  not  do  that  !" 

"Yes." 

"It  would  be  another  mistake,  I  think." 

"Another?" 

"Yes.  The  first  was  for  one  of  your  temperament  to 
come  to  a  great  noisy  class  like  this.  You  cannot  do  your 
best  work  here.  This  is  not  the  place  for  you." 

"What  could  I  have  done?" 

"You  can  work  under  some  artist  alone,  some  one  who 
can  give  you  more  time.  I  tell  you,  you  have  talent,  a  bello 
ing  eg  no,  signorina." 

She  looked  up  with  a  gleam  of  hope  shining  through 
tears. 

"  You — you  are  too  busy.  I'm  afraid  you  don't  receive 
pupils  at  your  own  studio,"  she  said,  timidly. 

"  No,  I  do  not  receive  pupils  as  a  rule  ;  but  I  will  receive 
you,  signorina." 

That  was  the  end  of  lessons  at  the  Cooper  Institute,  and 
the  beginning  of  the  brief,  but  best,  happiness  Valeria's 
life  was  to  know. 

Some  indiscreet  allusion  to  the  change  in  a  letter  Valeria 
or  her  brother  had  written  to  their  mother  brought  Mrs. 
Gano  in  hot  haste  to  New  York  again.  She  found  Valeria 
j&  different  being — but  she  also  found  Signor  Conti  and  a 
lonely  studio  in  a  side  street,  where  her  daughter  worked 
alone  with  this  foreigner,  modelling  "the  members  of  the 
human  body,"  while  the  sculptor  worked  on  his  "Lady  at 
the  Bath."  It  was  all  unspeakably  objectionable  and  un- 
American.  This  was  no  fit  milieu  for  a  Gano.  It  wasn't 
a  seemly  place  for  any  lady.  Valeria  must  come  home. 
She  told  her  so  the  same  night.  No,  Valeria  could  not  do 
that. 

"Why?  Are  you  so  attached,  then,  to  this  Italian 
image-maker  ?" 

Valeria  went  home  to  the  West  the  next  day.  The  fol 
lowing  winter  she  died. 

90 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

Little  Val  was  nearly  seven  when  she  woke  up  one  morn 
ing  and  was  told  that  the  baby  had  died  in  the  night. 
Then  it  was  true,  this  thing  she  had  heard  about  people 
dying.  Her  excitement  and  curiosity  were  infinitely  greater 
than  her  sorrow.  Had  he  gone  to  heaven  yet  ?  No,  he 
was  in  the  cold,  uninhabited  "best"  room,  where  nobody 
but  strangers — guests  and  grandmothers — had  ever  slept. 
She  made  Nanna  hurry  through  the  bath  and  dressing. 
The  nurse  was  crying.  Val  observed  her  critically. 

"  Isn't  heaven  a  nice  place  ?"  the  child  asked  ;  and  a 
vague  uneasiness  seized  her  with  regard  to  this  much- 
vaunted  reward  of  merit. 

"  Av  coorse,  av  coorse — the  most  beautiful  place  ye  can 
think  av.  The  streets  are  all  gowld,"  said  the  woman, 
with  quivering  face. 

"I  must  go  and  see  mamma,"  the  child  said. 

But  she  had  to  pass  the  "  best"  room  door.  She  couldn't 
get  by,  but  stood  there  rooted  before  it.  She  listened,  ad 
vancing  her  small  ear  nearer  and  nearer.  No  sound.  Then 
she  put  her  eye  to  the  key-hole.  But  the  key-hole  did  not 
command  the  bed.  She  glanced  over  her  shoulder — no 
body  near  ;  the  house  silent.  She  turned  the  knob  softly 
and  went  in,  shutting  the  door  behind  her ;  then  quickly 
reopening  it,  and  leaving  it  prudently  ajar.  She  tiptoed 
to  the  bed.  Behold,  the  coverlid  lay  smooth,  and  no  little 
dead  child  there  at  all.  Then  he  was  gone  to  heaven.  If 
she'd  got  up  a  little  earlier  she  might  have  seen  the  angel 
flying  off  with  him.  He  hadn't  left  the  window  open  ;  the 
very  blind  wasn't  drawn  up.  What  was  that  on  the  table  ? 
Something  white,  laid  over  something  strange,  and — two 
little  sandalled  feet  stuck  stiffly  out  ! 

On  the  table  !  It  couldn't  be  the  baby  lying  on  the  hard 
marble  slab  !  The  cruelty  of  the  idea  made  her  cold. 
Slowly  she  came  nearer.  She  circled,  fascinated,  round  to 
the  other  side.  Yes,  a  gleam  of  the  baby's  yellow  hair. 
The  white  cloth  over  him  was  a  little  awry,  but  it  covered 
the  body  and  hid  the  face.  Horrible  to  have  the  air  shut 
out;  she  felt  stifled  at  the  thought.  He  was  lying  on  a 

01 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

pillow,  she  could  see.  But  there  was  something  inhuman 
in  leaving  u  baby  like  this.  And  they  had  been  so  irritat- 
ingly  careful  of  him  before,  never  left  him  alone  a  moment ; 
neglected  her  on  his  account  ;  wouldn't  even  let  her  hold 
him — oh,  so  carefully  ;  and  now — this  !  Nothing,  perhaps, 
in  all  the  strange  circumstance — not  even  the  subsequent 
burial — impressed  the  child  so  painfully  as  this  fact  of  the 
baby  being  laid  unguarded  on  a  table,  as  though  he  had 
been  no  more  than  a  book.  This  it  was  that  by  one  stroke 
seemed  to  cut  him  off  from  fellowship,  that  suddenly  de 
graded  him  from  his  high  estate  of  life  and  lordly  con 
sideration.  This  "  death  "  was  evidently  a  far  stranger 
thing  than  going  to  heaven. 

A  feeling  of  intense  commiseration  for  the  little  brother 
swept  over  her.  She  came  nearer,  crying.  "  Poor  !  poor  \" 
she  whispered.  Why  had  they  shut  out  the  air?  She 
lifted  her  hand  and  turned  the  linen  down  from  the  waxen 
face.  Her  tears  dried  on  her  cheeks  as  she  stood  staring. 
He  might  be  only  asleep.  How  had  they  come  to  be  so 
sure,  and  lay  him  unguarded  on  a  table,  when  he  might 
wake  and—  She  saw  in  a  flash  how  she  would  earn  the 
gratitude  of  the  family.  She  would  wake  him,  and  she, 
who  hadn't  been  allowed  to  hold  him,  would  carry  him  to 
her  mother.  And  how  glad  they'd  all  be  !  And  it  would 
be  her  doing. 

"Baby,"  she  said  ;  "  baby,  wake  up  !"  She  put  her  hand 
on  the  body,  and  withdrew  it  quickly.  He  felt  so  strangely 
unlike  life  and  tender  babyhood.  An  evil  dread  took  hold 
on  her.  She  strove  some  moments,  battling  with  new  sus 
picions  and  vague  fears.  "  Poor  little  baby  !  poor  little 
baby  !"  she  whispered,  tiptoed  up,  and  kissed  his  cheek. 
Violently  she  started  back.  Who  that  ever,  as  a  child,  has 
felt  that  first  chill  contact  with  the  mysterious  enemy— 
who  does  not  remember  the  formless  horror  it  conjures  up 
in  the  unprepared  young  mind  ?  This,  then,  was  death. 
She  walked  backward  to  the  door,  staring  at  the  dead  face, 
feeling  that  cold  touch  on  her  lips  spread  like  a  frost 
through  her  body.  She  must  go  quickly  and  get  into  her 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

mother's  lap.  With  her  hand  on  the  door,  "  Poor!  poor!" 
she  repeated  with  a  sob,  still  looking  back  at  the  face. 
"  You  can't  come  and  get  warm  in  mother's  lap  any  more  ; 
you've  got  to  go  to  heaven."  Had  they  any  idea  how  cold 
the  baby  was  ?  Should  she  go  and  get  his  quilted  travel 
ling-coat  ?  Was  it  any  use  ?  A  faint  dawning  of  the 
hopelessness  of  any  earthly  service  to  the  dead  made  her 
resolution  waver,  and,  with  that,  a  horrible  weight  de 
scended  on  her  heart.  She  drew  a  hard  breath,  ran  back  to 
the  table,  and  knelt  down  before  it  with  folded  hands  and 
trembling  lips.  "  Forgive  me,  baby,"  she  whispered,  "  'bout 
the  yellow  ball.  If  Fd  known  this  I  wouldn't  have  taken 
it  away."  She  scrambled  to  her  feet  and  ran  out  as  fast  as 
she  could,  leaving  the  door  ajar. 

She  was  going  up  to  bed  that  same  evening,  full  of  ex 
citement  and  speculation,  when  her  father  called  to  Nanna 
over  the  banisters  to  come  and  help  to  find  the  smelling- 
salts —  her  mistress  had  fainted. 

'•'Go  to  your  room;  FJ1  come  presently,"  said  the 
woman  ;  and  they  shut  her  mother's  door. 

They  hadn't  let  her  go  in  since  morning.  Her  mother 
was  ill,  they  said,  but  that  was  a  pretence  ;  she  was 
always  ill.  The  reason  Val  was  shut  out  to-day  was  be 
cause  her  grandmother  had  arrived  that  morning,  and 
her  grandmother  was  her  enemy.  She  was  in  there 
now. 

On  every-day  occasions  Val  would  have  contested  the 
matter  ;  but,  grandmothers  apart,  there  was  a  great  deal  to 
think  about  and  consider  just  now. 

She  sat  down  on  the  stairs.  She  had  seen  her  father  cry 
ing  that  day,  and  the  very  foundations  of  all  stabilities 
seemed  tottering.  Men  could  cry,  it  seemed — cry  like  lit 
tle  children.  It  was  very  strange  ;  she  had  supposed  it  a 
thing  to  be  outgrown.  For  her  own  part,  she  had  nearly 
overcome  the  childish  habit.  The  baby,  of  course,  had 
cried  a  great  deal;  but  one's  father  ! 

Somebody  was  coming  up-stairs  behind  the  servant — a 
strange  man.  What  was  he  carrying  ?  Something  big, 

93 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

and  as  shiny  as  tne  new  musical -box.     She  hugged  the 
banisters  as  the  two  passed. 

"  What's  that  ?"  she  said  to  Matilda. 

The  servant  didn't  answer.  She  and  the  strange  man 
went  by.  As  Val  was  in  the  act  of  following,  her  grand 
mother  appeared.  She  looked  at  Val  a  moment,  and  then 
called  the  nurse  in  a  whisper  :  "  Put  that  child  to  bed." 

To-morrow  was  the  funeral.  She  should  go,  she  had 
said. 

"  No,  certainly  not,'"  said  her  grandmother  ;  and  Val  set 
her  firm  little  mouth. 

After  breakfast  the  next  morning,  her  father  went  into 
the  room  where  the  baby  was,  and  stayed  a  long  time.  The 
doctor  was  with  her  mother.  The  doctor  was  a  rude  man, 
with  a  long  yellow-white  beard  ;  he  had  spoken  as  sternly 
as  if  he'd  been  one's  grandmother  when  Val  had  said  she 
would  see  her  mother.  She  lingered  now  by  the  "  best " 
room  door.  Would  she  hear  her  father  crying  again  ?  She 
hoped  she  would.  There  was  something  so  horribly  excit 
ing  in  it;  it  made  her  feel  as  if  she  should  die,  and  yet  she 
listened  eagerly  to  find  out  if  he  were  doing  it  again. 

No  sound.  He  came  out  after  a  long,  long  while,  and 
kissed  her  ;  his  face  was  wet. 

"Run  to  your  nurse,  my  dear,"  he  said. 

She  didn't  tell  him  Nanna  had  been  sent  out.  He 
smoothed  her  hair,  and  then  went  into  her  mother's  room. 

She  was  thinking  a  great  deal  about  the  baby.  Nanna 
had  been  telling  her  more  about  heaven.  The  nurse  hadn't 
liked  it  when  the  child  had  asked  leading  questions  about 
the  grave.  But  Nanna  herself  had  said  dozens  of  times  be 
fore,  "I've  buried  me  husband  and  three  childer."  What 
a  curious  idea  to  put  people  in  the  dirty,  black  ground  ! 
And  the  baby  !  It  must  be  very  bad  for  his  pretty  white 
clothes.  How  awful  to  have  earth  on  one's  face,  all  over 
the  ears  and  mouth  !  She  choked  a  little.  But  one 
wouldn't  feel  it,  of  course  ;  the  real  baby  was  in  heaven. 
Ho  would  have  everything  there.  "  Yellow  balls,  too  ?"  she 
had  asked  Nanna. 

94 


TUP:  OPP;N  QUESTION 

"He  won't  want  the  likes  of  that/'  the  nurse  had  said. 
Nanna  was  very  stupid  ;  as  if  the  baby  had  ever  wanted 
anything  in  his  life  so  much  as  that  yellow  ball  !  Con 
science  pricked  cruelly.  She  Had  been  selfish  and  horrid  to 
the  poor  baby.  She  fell  a-crying.  Very  likely  they  didn't 
have  yellow  balls  in  heaven,  and  wouldn't  know  how  much 
the  baby  loved  them,  and  he  mightn't  like  to  ask  ;  besides, 
the  poor  baby  talked  such  a  queer  language,  strangers  never 
understood  him.  A  sudden  inspiration.  It  was  rather 
confusing  about  the  real  baby  in  heaven,  and  the  real  baby 
in  the  "best"  room.  Wouldn't  it  be  better  to  be  on  the 
safe  side  ?  Anyhow,  there  was  that  business  about  Gabriel 
and  the  Last  Trump  and  the  Resurrection.  They  had 
talked  about  that  in  church,  and  Nanna  and  mother  had 
said  it  was  true.  The  dead  would  surely  rise  ;  the  baby  in 
the  "best"  room  there  would  one  day  come  alive.  It 
looked  as  if  there'd  be  two  real  babies  in  the  end ;  but 
never  mind.  She  flew  up-stairs,  rummaged  the  cupboard 
in  the  nursery,  and  came  flying  down  with  something  wrap 
ped  in  her  apron.  The  doctor  was  in  the  lower  hall  talking 
to  her  father  ;  she  peeped  at  them  through  the  balusters, 
then  softly  on  to  the  "  best "  room. 

She  shut  the  door  this  time,  though  more  frightened  than 
the  day  before.  She  stopped  short  in  the  middle  of  the 
room.  Too  late  !  the  baby  had  gone.  But  there  was  some 
thing  she'd  never  seen  before.  She  went  close.  How 
pretty  and  shiny  it  was  ;  it  smelt  like  the  piano.  Why, 
this  was  what  the  strange  man  had  brought  up-stairs  behind 
Matilda  last  night.  It  was  bigger  than  the  musical-box — 
much  bigger.  What  was  in  this  beautiful,  shiny,  new 
thing  ?  She  dragged  a  chair  to  the  table,  climbed  on  it, 
and  looked  down  into  the  coffin. 

She  stood  some  time  motionless  ;  then,  hearing  a  noise  in 
the  hall,  hurriedly  lifted  a  corner  of  the  baby's  frock  and 
pushed  a  yellow  ball  down  against  the  padded  white  satin 
side. 

In  spite  of  the  continued  "riling"  presence  of  a  grand- 

95 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

mother  in  the  house,  Val  made  up  her  mind  to  be  very 
good  now  the  baby  was  gone,  and  be  a  comfort  to  her 
mother.  No  more  fights  with  Nanna,  even  over  the  hair- 
combing  ;  no  defiant  refusals  to  say  her  prayers.  Standing 
by  the  cot  in  her  nightgown  the  evening  of  the  funeral, 
" 1  shall  say  three  prayers,"  she  announced,  sternly;  "and 
you  mustn't  interrupt,  Nanna." 

"  Three  !"  said  the  nurse,  suspicious  of  such  overwhelm 
ing  piety. 

"Yes;  I  shall  say,  'Our  Father/  and  'Newer  Lamy/ 
and  then  one  of  my  own — one  I  can  understand  as  well  as 
God.  Now  !  Sh  !"  She  knelt  down  and  recited  the  two 
accustomed  petitions,  and  then,  still  kneeling  there,  poured 
forth  some  stringent  directions  to  the  Lord  which  horrified 
the  good  Christian  woman  not  a  little. 

After  that,  Val  insisted  on  going  to  church,  rain  or  shine. 
She  read  her  Bible  with  vigor  and  astonishment,  belabor 
ing  Nanna  with  difficult  questions.  Nanna  was  so  ill-in 
spired  as  sometimes  to  appeal  in  her  perplexity  to  the  elder 
Mrs.  Gaiio.  But  this  lady  found  to  her  cost  that  the  course 
so  successfully  pursued  with  little  Ethan  was  doomed  to 
failure  here.  When  she  thought  to  curb  the  excessive 
Gano  concern  about  Biblical  interpretation  by  saying,  "  Jt 
is  not  a  book  for  children,"  she  was  met  with  : 

"  My  Bible  says,  '  Suffer  little  children/  and  people 
'  mustn't  despise  the  little  ones/  ' 

Her  father  began  to  laugh  ;  she  felt  encouraged  to  pro 
ceed  : 

"And  says,  'Search  ye  the  Scriptures/  too;  nothin' 
'bout  waitin'  till  you're  old." 

"  You  are  too  young  to  understand,  even  if  I  should  try 
to  explain." 

"  Why,  I  understand  it  nearly  every  bit,"  she  answered, 
indignantly,  "all  except  the  mizz — I  can't  find  where  it 
says  about  the  mizz." 

"  The  mizz  ?"  repeated  Mrs.  Gano. 

"  The  mizz  ?"  her  father  echoed,  uneasily.  "  I  haven't 
read  about  that  myself." 

96 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  Well,  you've  heard  about  it  in  church.  Didn't  you  go 
to  church  when  you  were  young  ?" 

"  Yes/'  said  her  parent,  meekly,  feeling  the  full  force 
of  her  implied  criticism.  "  But  I  don't  recall  the— what 
is  it  ?" 

"  The  mizz.  Mr.  Weston  says  every  Sunday  in  the  Com 
mandments  :  '  The  sea  and  all  that  in  the  mizz/ ' 

The  elder  Mrs.  Gano  could  have  put  up  with  these  crude 
evidences  of  a  share  in  the  family  bias,  but  not  with  her 
granddaughter's  growing  unsubmissiveness,  her  chronic  mu 
tiny  against  the  smallest  restraint.  The  child  had  been 
taught  early  to  look  upon  herself  as  a  very  potent  factor 
in  the  family  life.  She  observed  that  arrangements  that 
failed,  to  meet  with  her  approval  were  often  altered.  Her 
mother's  sternest  form  of  discipline  had  been  to  argue  with 
her.  More  than  one  servant  had  been  dismissed  in  obedi 
ence  to  Miss  Val's  demands.  There  was  the  case  of  the 
lady  house-keeper  from  Boston,  who,  in  addition  to  regular 
duties,  undertook  also  to  teach  Val — a  learned  maiden  lady 
with  shaky  nerves  and  a  passion  for  history.  It  was  sup 
posed  she  left  so  suddenly  because  of  illness  in  her  family, 
until  Val  admitted  that  she  had  threatened  the  lady  with 
the  carving-knife  after  dinner  one  day. 

"  What  on  earth  made  you  do  that  ?"  said  the  child's 
father,  horrified. 

"  She  talked  too  much  about  the  British,"  replied  Val, 
calmly. 

"  What  !" 

"  I  said  the  Americans  were  just  as  brave.  I  could  see 
she  didn't  think  so,  so  I  got  the  carvin'-knife  and — well, 
you  know,  she  just  caught  the  three-o'clock  train." 

The  June  of  that  year  was  intensely  hot,  but  young  Mrs. 
Gano  was  too  ill  to  be  carried  out  of  the  stifling  city.  Val 
was  sent  into  the  country  to  some  cousins  "for  a  cliange" 
— for  whose  change  was  not  insisted  upon.  She  was  not 
brought  back  till  the  day  after  her  mother's  funeral.  It 
was  a  strange  and  terrible  time.  For  once  she  was  passive 
and  subdued.  If  the  servants  had  not  already  remarked 
G  97 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

on  her  hard-heartedness,  slic  would  have  cried  herself  ill. 
But  she  was  full  of  a  dull  resentment  as  well  as  pain.  At 
the  time  she  was  sent  away  she  had  gathered,  as  a  quick 
witted  child  does — Heaven  knows  how  ! — that  her  mother 
was  dangerously  ill.  During  that  time  in  the  country  she 
had  prayed  for  her  recovery  as  she  never  prayed  hcfore  or 
after,  as  none  but  the  passionate-hearted  ever  pray.  Night 
after  night,  when  the  light  had  been  put  out,  and  the  others 
had  gone  to  sleep,  Val  would  get  out  of  bed  and  kneel 
down  at  the  side  beseeching  God  to  save  her  mother's  life, 
and  making  solemn  compacts  with  the  Lord  of  Hosts.  She 
would  be  so  good,  and  build  a  church,  too,  in  memory  of 
this  answer  to  prayer ;  she  would  be  a  nun,  and  serve  God 
all  her  days,  if  lie  would  spare  her  mother.  She  pointed 
out  how  easy  it  was  for  the  Ail-Powerful  to  do  this  little 
thing.  She  wasn't  waiting  till  it  would  require  a  Lazarus 
miracle,  she  was  asking  Him  in  good  time.  He  had  only 
to  let  the  doctors  know  what  would  cure  her.  But  she, 
Val  Gano,  would  recognize  in  the  recovery  a  direct  answer 
to  prayer,  and  she  would  keep  her  vows.  She  remembered 
a  sermon  she  had  heard  on  mountain-moving  faith.  Hers 
should  be  perfect  and  unfaltering.  She  knew  God  would 
answer  this  one  prayer ;  she  saw  herself  already  in  her 
nunjs  black  habit,  and  began  to  say  her  last  farewell  to  the 
world,  to  the  prince  that  she  knew  was  coming  later  on, 
to  all  her  children — she  called  them  by  their  names,  "  five 
brave  sons  and  five  beauteous  daughters/'  She  turned  her 
back  on  them  all,  cut  her  long  hair,  and  heard  the  convent 
gates  clang  to — all  this  was  an  accomplished  destiny  in  her 
mind,  when  the  telegram  came  to  say  her  mother  was  dead. 
Her  father  was  ill,  too,  now  ;  there  was  nothing  but  sick 
ness  and  death  in  the  world,  and  the  child  was  to  stay 
where  she  was.  The  telegram  was  from  her  grandmother 
to  cousin  Nathaniel.  Four  days  later,  when  she  was  per 
mitted  to  go  home,  the  funeral  was  over,  and  her  grand 
mother  was  in  charge  of  her  mother's  house.  It  was  very 
awful.  What  did  God  mean  by  it  ? 

The  following  week  John  Gano  returned  to  his  post  at 

98 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

the  bank.  As  he  was  leaving  the  counting-room,  that  first 
and  last  day  after  the  death  of  his  wife,  he  was  seized  with 
a  violent  hemorrhage,  and  was  carried  home,,  it  was  thought, 
to  die. 

Mrs.  Gano  nursed  her  son  back  to  something  faintly 
resembling  health,  and  urged  him  to  come  home  with  her. 
No  ;  he  would  stay  where  he  was,  till — 

"  Nonsense  !  you  must  rouse  yourself  for  your  chil 
dren's  sake.  Here  is  Val,  left  to  servants,  and  running 
wild.  She  must  go  to  school.  None  better  than  the  New 
Plymouth  Seminary  for  Young  Ladies." 

"  Oh,  time  enough  for  that.  I  can't  let  the  child  go 
just  yet." 

"  There  isn't  time.  That  child  is  going  to  wreck  and 
ruin.  And  you  don't  suppose  Pm  going  to  leave  you  here 
alone  ?  You  must  come  and  get  well  and  strong." 

"  It's  no  use,"  the  invalid  said,  adding,  half  under  his 
breath  :  "I'm  done  for." 

"  Hush  !"  she  interrupted,  frowning.  "  Anybody  is  done 
for  who  has  made  up  his  mind  that  he  is." 

John  Gano  shook  his  head. 

. "  You  know  we  all  go  like  this.     It's  not  a  matter  of 
imagination." 

"  Nearly  everything's  a  matter  of  imagination,"  she  said. 

The  gaunt  man  put  his  handkerchief  to  his  lips. 

"  This  is  imagination,  too,  I  suppose,"  he  said,  as  he 
turned  the  bright  spot  in  and  out  of  sight — "  a  case  of 
seeing  red." 

"  That  small  stain  means  very  little  in  itself,"  she  re 
torted,  seeming  scarcely  moved  ;  "  its  effect  on  your  mind 
is  the  only  thing  to  be  afraid  of." 

"  You  speak  as  though  I  hadn't  inherited  the  blessed 
business." 

"Oh,  inherited  —  inherited!  I'm  sick  of  that  white 
feather  showing  all  along  the  line.  Look  at  me  !" 

He  did  look  at  her.  She  seemed  suddenly  taller  and 
thinner  and  grayer  and  more  defiant  than  any  being  ho 
had  ever  beheld. 

99 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  Look  at  me  !"  she  repeated.     "  I  have  been  given  np 
by  the  doctors  half  a  dozen  times.     My  mother  was  told 

when  I  was  sixteen  that  I  had  only  a  piece  of  a  lung  left 

that  it  might  last  me  through  the  winter.  It  iias°served 
my  purpose  for  half  a  century  since.  But  I  didn't  worry 
about  the  color  of  my  handkerchiefs,  and  I  didn't  admit  for 
a  moment  that  I  could  possibly  be  induced  to  die — that  is, 
of  course" — she  put  on  a  sudden  aspect  of  resignation  that 
was  almost  funny— "  unless  it  was  the  Lord's  will." 


CHAPTER  VIII 

seemed  to  matter  now  that  her  mother  was 
dead.  It  was  plain  Val  would  never  be  happy  again. 
Leaving  her  home,  to  which  she  was  devotedly  attached, 
was  hardly  a  misfortune,  any  more  than  going  to  live  with 
her  grandmother.  What  did  anything  matter  ?  God 
hadn't  heard  her  prayers  ;  He  had  mocked  her  faith,  and 
she  was  motherless.  She  hadn't  enough  interest  in  life 
even  to  be  "owdacious,"  as  her  grandmother  called  it. 
She  was  passive,  almost  "good." 

Her  father,  observing  her  settled  depression  on  the 
journey  West,  gathered  her  into  his  arms,,  and  whis 
pered  : 

"We  have  each  other,  you  know." 

And  she  lay  with  her  face  hidden,  and  cried  a  long  time, 
so  quietly  that  her  grandmother  thought  she  was  asleep. 

It  was  the  reunion  with  her  little  sister  that  first  roused 
her  out  of  her  unchildlike  apathy.  Not  the  genial  warmth 
of  family  affection,  not  the  diversion  of  having  a  playmate, 
but  the  tonic  of  a  vigorous  antagonism,  as  unexpected  as 
it  seemed  unnatural. 

"  Where  is  my  room  ?"  Val  had  asked,  on  the  evening  of 
their  arrival  at  the  Old  Fort. 

"You  are  to  sleep  with  Emmeline,"  said  her  grand 
mother. 

"But,  grandma,  I've  never  slept  with  any  one." 

"  Haven't  you,  my  dear  ?" 

"No,  and  I've  always — 

"  That  will  do  now.  Go  up-stairs  and  wash  your  face 
and  hands.  Emmeline  will  show  you  the  way." 

Val  went  off  quietly  enough,  but  it  might  have  staggered 

101 


THE    Ol'EN    QUESTION 

Mrs.-G'ano  eould  -she'-havfe  known  the  rage  and  rebellion 
that  seethed  in  that  small  female  heart. 

It  was  dusk  np  in  the  little  girls'  room. 

"  Why  haven't  they  lit  the  gas  ?"  asked  Val. 

"We  don't  have  gas  here." 

"Lamps,  then." 

"Gamma  thinks  lamps  are  too  esplosive." 

"  Do  you  live  in  the  dark  ?" 

"No;  we  have  candles,  but  it  ain't  dark  enough  yet. 
I'll  show  you  where  everything  is." 

"I'll  find 'em  myself." 

Val  had  espied  the  candles  on  the  bureau.  She  lit 
them. 

"  Oh,  we  never  have  more'n  one/'  admonished  Emmie, 
gently. 

Val  went  on  calmly  with  her  toilet.  Presently  Mrs. 
Gano  looked  in. 

"Come  to  supper,  little  girls,  as  soon  as  you're  ready." 

She  was  going  away  without  more  words,  when  Emmie 
called  out  excitedly  : 

"Just  look,  gamma  — two  candles  a-burnin',  'and  no 
ship  at  sea  !' " 

Mrs.  Gano  smiled. 

"Yes,  my  dear;  one  is  enough." 

She  put  the  extinguisher  over  the  nearest,  and  went 
down-stairs. 

"Skinflint!"  observed  Val. 

The  supper  was  on  this  occasion  a  late  and  hurriedly 
prepared  meal.  There  were  soft-boiled  eggs.  Val  helped 
herself  to  two,  and  broke  them  into  a  tumbler  ;  then  mixed 
in  salt,  and  pepper,  and  butter,  and  bits  of  bread. 

"Just  look  at  what  Val's  doing!"  said  Emmie,  with  in 
nocent  excitement,  while  her  elder  and  more  accomplished 
sister  stirred  the  agreeable  compound  round  and  round. 

"  Never  do  that  again,"  said  Mrs.  Gano,  suddenly  aware 
of  the  enormity.  "I  don't  like  people  to  make  puddings 
in  their  tumblers  at  my  table." 

"  T'ain't  puddin',"  said  Val. 

102 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"That  will  do."  Mrs.  Gano  ended  the  matter  accord 
ing  to  her  usual  formula.  "  Will  you  have  some  corn 
bread  ?" 

"No,  thank  you  ;  I  don't  like  it." 

"It  is  enough  to  answer,  i  No,  thank  you."  Never  say 
you  don't  like  anything  you  see  on  my  table." 

Val  wished  her  father  had  not  been  too  tired  to  come  to 
supper.  She  had  observed  that  she  was  never  so  much 
corrected  in  his  presence. 

The  full  moon  was  shining  in  the  gloaming  as  they 
passed  the  open  veranda  door  coming  from  their  belated 
meal. 

"Let's  go  out  a  minute,"  said  Val  to  Emmie,  in  a 
whisper. 

"  No  ;  it's  too  late.     I'd  catch  cold." 

"Oh,  nonsense  !     Come  along." 

And  she  dragged  her  little  sister  off.  But  they  stayed 
out  only  a  few  minutes. 

Emmie  came  in  crying. 

"Gamma,  she  made  me  fall  down  on  the  g'avel." 

Val,  without  explanation  or  apology,  flushed  angrily  and 
ran  up-stairs.  She  knocked  at  her  father's  door. 

"  Come  in,"  he  said,  and  she  went  over  in  the  dim  can 
dlelight  and  stood  by  his  bed. 

"  How  you  feel,  father  ?" 

"Little  tired,"  he  answered.  "Are  yon  come  to  say 
good-night  ?" 

"I  'spose  I  mustn't  stay  ?" 

"Oh,  a  minute  or  two." 

She  perched  on  the  side  of  his  bed.  She  had  come  in 
with  the  express  intention  of  making  complaints.  Some 
vague  notion  of  sparing  him  because  he  was  ill  kept  her 
tongue-tied. 

"Isn't  this  a  nice  old  house  ?"  he  said,  presently. 

"Y — yes,"  she  answered. 

"'In  the  daytime  you'll  see  what  capital  places  there  are 
for  you  and  Emmie  to  play  in." 

"Is  it  true  I  mustn't  swing  on  the  gate  ?" 

H)3 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"Well,  I  daresay—" 

"Emmie  says  so.  Is  it  true  I  mustn't  roll  down  the 
terraces  ?" 

"  H'm— well— " 

"Emmie  says  so.  What  are  terraces  for,  anyhow?  I 
thought,"  she  added,  with  a  sigh—"  I  thought  it  was  go 
ing  to  be  like  the  country." 

"Oh,  wait  till  you  see  it  by  daylight.  It's  a  great  deal 
more  like  the  country  than  New  York." 

"  She  doesn't  keep  a  horse  ?" 

"No." 

"  Nor  a  cow  ?" 

"No  ;  there's  no  stable,  you  see." 

"  There  isn't  any  pig,  father  !" 

"  Oh  no  ;  she  wouldn't  like  a  pig." 

"  But  there  isn't  a  single  smallest  kind  of  a  dog  here. 
There  isn't,"  she  wound  up,  tremulously — "  there  isn't  even 
a  chicken." 

"You  just  wait  till  to-morrow,  and  I'll  show  you  heaps 
of  nice  things.  There  isn't  a  finer  tulipifera  rhododendron 
in  the  world  than  the  one  out  by  the  back  veranda.  And 
there's  a  beautiful  old  crooked  catalpa  on  the  terrace  you 
can  make  a  house  in." 

"Emmie  says  she  only  lets  cousin  Ethan  climb  trees." 

"Oh-a,  well  — a  — I  dare  say  there  are  plenty  of  other 
things.  Aren't  the  peaches  nearly  ripe  ?" 

"I  don't  know." 

"llave  you  seen  my  Indian  arrowheads  and  stone 
hatchets  down-stairs  in  the  cabinet  ?" 

Val  shook  her  head  despairingly. 

"  They're  in  her  room." 

Her  father  seemed  not  to  notice. 

"And  to-morrow  I  must  show  yon  the  great  slab  of 
stone  at  the  back  door.  The  oldest  inhabitant  of  this 
place  told  me  when  I  first  came  to  New  Plymouth  that  he 
remembered  cracking  nuts  there  at  recess  in  1800,  when  he 
went  to  school  here.  There  aren't  many  little  girls  who 
have  such  a  wonderful  old  house  to  live  in." 

104 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"N — no.  I  liked  the  little  trees  and  houses  in  the  sil 
ver  at  supper." 

"  You'll  like  lots  of  things.  I've  got  an  old  fiddle  some 
where  about — " 

"  Have  you  ?     Oh,  that  '11  be  fun  !" 

She  crept  up  under  his  arm  and  nestled  down  against  him. 

It  is  no  part  of  the  office  of  this  plain  chronicle  to  at 
tempt  to  justify  any  person  in  it.  Mrs.  Gano  herself  was 
too  little  touched  by  other  people's  opinions  for  one  who 
sets  about  reporting  her  to  dare  belittle  her  robust  errors, 
or  omit  the  defects  of  her  qualities.  Few  things  would 
have  bothered  her  so  much  as  "being  universally  beloved," 
as  the  phrase  goes  ;  and  yet,  or  perhaps  because  of  this, 
her  family  affections  struck  such  deep  root  that  plucking 
them  up  was  like  tearing  asunder  the  very  fibres  of  her 
life.  Even  now,  even  to  her  son,  she  could  not  speak  of 
Valeria.  Her  long  hands  shook  when  she  touched  the  dead 
woman's  books.  When  chance  would  bring  to  light  a  scrap 
of  the  familiar  writing,  she  would  look  away  hurriedly, 
that  she  might  not  break  down  utterly  and  lose  herself  in 
that  ocean  of  agonized  regret  that  had  threatened  to  sweep 
her,  too,  out  of  the  world  after  Valeria's  death.  It  could 
never  have  occurred  to  her  as  possible  that  she  should  set 
about  winning  anybody's  affections.  She  would  probably 
have  regarded  it  as  a  slavish  and  far  from  upright  proced 
ure.  Affection  was  not  a  thing  to  set  snares  for.  It  was 
the  duty  of  children  to  love  their  parents  (she  would  prob 
ably  have  said  to  "honor"  them) ;  it  was  the  duty  of  par 
ents  to  train  the  children  in  the  way  they  should  go.  That 
was  "the  law  and  the  prophets."  She  could  never  have 
quite  realized  the  impression  she  made  on  the  young  or 
guilty-minded,  but  she  would  not  have  denied  that  she  be 
longed  to  a  generation  disposed  to  treat  healthy  children 
on  more  or  less  Spartan  principles.  She  had  from  time  to 
time  obtained  a  sufficiently  all-round  view  of  the  spoil 
ing  process  that  had,  to  her  thinking,  wellnigh  ruined  Val 
Gano. 

105 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

She  had  come  quickly  to  the  conclusion  that  she  would 
say  nothing  more  to  the  child's  nervous  juul  ailing  father, 
hut  was  quite  definitely  minded  to  set  to  work  quietly  and 
vigorously  to  correct  in  Val's  upbringing  the  pernicious 
mixture  of  sentimentality  and  neglect  that  had  made  the 
child  a  revoUee  and  a  household  terror.  Already  in  New 
York  there  had  been  a  battle  royal  on  the  subject  of  the 
proper  bedtime  for  a  little  girl.  Val  had  announced  her 
self  in  no  uncertain  note  as  mortally  opposed  to  retiring 
at  eight,  or  even  nine.  If  there  was  one  thing  more  than 
another  that  she  objected  to  utterly  it  was  this  going  to 
bed  at  all.  Her  mother  had  been  helpless  to  prevent  her 
from  ranging  the  house  till  remorseless  sleep  struck  her 
down  in  the  midst  of  her  delights.  If  she  could  manage 
to  keep  her  eyes  open,  or  to  wake  up  after  a  brief  oblivion, 
she  had  made  no  bones  about  descending  during  the  even 
ing  in  her  night-gown,  entirely  prepared  for  the  rapturous 
reception  she  knew  awaited  her  from  her  father.  Val  had 
early,  then,  come  to  associate  her  grandmother  with  tyran 
nical  designs  on  the  liberty  of  the  free-born  child  after  the 
hour  of  eight.  She  also  had  cause  to  know  her  repulsive 
opinions  on  the  value  of  a  milk  and  cereal  diet  for  the 
young.  These,  and  a  general  sense  of  radically  opposed 
interests,  not  unmixed  with  astonishment  at,  and  fear  of, 
the  alarming  old  lady,  made  up  the  sum  of  Val's  dismay 
when  she  came  calmly  to  consider  what  life  was  going  to 
be  like  here  at  the  Fort. 

She  woke  up  on  the  morning  after  her  arrival  with  a 
vague  sense  of  a  duty  to  perform.  She  rubbed  her  eyes 
and  kicked  Emmie.  Ah,  yes,  that  was  it — her  grandmother 
had  not  understood.  She  had  condemned  Val,  who  was 
accustomed  to  her  own  room,  with  all  her  "  things"  about 
her,  just  as  she  liked  them,  and  no  one  to  interfere — she 
had  put  Val  in  "another  person's  room,''  with  a  single 
big  bed  in  it,  and  condemned  her  to  sleep  with  Emmie. 
Her  grandmother  must  be  brought  to  a  better  under 
standing. 

The  child  made  no  further  announcement  of  her  frame 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

of  mind  till  she  sat  down  to  a  barren  breakfast  with  the 
despised  Emmie.  There  was  no  coffee.  There  was  tea 
going  up  to  her  father,  as  usual.  The  silent  Emmie 
quaffed  her  mug  of  milk  serenely.  For  a  year  now  Val 
had  demanded  and  been  given  her  morning  cup  of  coffee. 

"Ask  for  some  for  me,  please/'  she  said,  after  making 
inquiries  of  Venie. 

"  Gamma  says  cawfee  will  make  you  an  old  woman  be 
fore  you're  a  young  one/'  said  Emmie,  showing  her  milk- 
white  teeth  in  a  pleased  smile.  "You  can't  have  any 
cawfee." 

"  Tell  the  cook,  please,"  said  Val,  in  a  loud  voice,  "  that 
I'm  waitiri'  for  my  coffee." 

An'  Jerusha  put  in  a  turbaned  head. 

"Lordy,  missy  !  don'  yer  yell  like  dat,  an'  I'll  make  yo'. 
some  cambric  tea." 

"  I  won't  drink  cambric  tea.  I'm  the  oldest  of  the 
famerly,  and  my  father  always  let  me  have  coffee." 

"  Yo'  father  ve'y  ill,  missy.  Yo'  mustn't  worrit  yo' 
father." 

"I  never  worry  my  father — I  settle  everything  for  my 
self.  Are  you  going  to  get  my  coffee  ?" 

"Can't  do  dat,  missy,  widotit  leab." 

"Isn't  grandma  coming  to  breakfast  ?" 

"No;  she  always  habs  it  in  her  own  room  since  Miss 
Valery  died." 

The  child  pushed  back  her  chair  and  marched  out.  The 
two  women  called  remonstrance  after  her,  but  a  mighty 
indignation  swept  her  on.  She  halted  before  her  grand 
mother's  room,  knocked  loudly,  and  opened  the  door 
without  further  waiting. 

Midway  in  her  valiant  advance  upon  the  enemy  she  stood 
still.  Mrs.  Gano  was  sitting  propped  with  huge  feather 
pillows  in  an  ancient  four-poster.  She  wore  a  small 
shrunken  cotton  nightcap  awry  on  her  wonderful  thick 
hair,  which  tumbled  out  in  a  tangle  of  silver  and  lay  di 
shevelled  over  the  white  flannel  jacket  that  was  buttoned 
crooked  over  her  night-gown,  the  sleeves  hanging  loose  and 

107 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

armless.  In  her  long  taper  fingers  she  held  an  open  letter. 
Envelopes,  notes,  the  Baltimore  Sun,  and  other  papers 
were  strewn  thick  over  the  silk  patchwork  quilt.  A  break 
fast  tray  stood  on  a  table  by  the  bedside.  It  wasn't  her 
attire,  it  wasn't  even  the*  shrunken,  rakish  nightcap  (self- 
conscious  and  uneasy  at  its  obvious  shortcomings),  that 
made  the  old  lady's  aspect  so  arresting.  She  had  not  said 
a  word  at  the  child's  irruption,  but  she  lowered  her  chin 
and  looked  over  her  heavy  gold-rimmed  spectacles  with  a 
strange  cold  stare,  singularly  disconcerting,  even  slightly 
paralyzing.  But  YaFs  was  a  bold  heart.  And  she  realized 
that  a  blow  must  be  struck  for  liberty. 

"  They  haven't  given  me  any  coffee  for  my  breakfast," 
she  announced,  with  equal  directness  and  warmth. 

The  piercing  eyes  bored  into  her,  but  the  stern  mouth 
uttered  no  word.  The  child  began  to  wish  she'd  waited 
till  her  grandmother  were  properly  dressed  and  looked 
more  human. 

"I'm  in  my  eighth  year/'  she  went  on  with  dignity, 
"and  I'm  accustomed— 

" '  Good-morning  !'  is  the  custom  in  this  house,"  said 
the  old  lady. 

"Oh  I  Good-morning!"  Slight  pause.  "  The  servant 
says  you  told  her  I  wasn't  to  have  coffee." 

"Well  ?" 

"  I  always  have  it  at  home." 

"  You're  not  at  home  now." 

"  But  I  can't  eat  breakfast  without — 

"  There's  no  need  for  you  to  eat  breakfast  if  you're  not 
hungry." 

"  Why  can't  I  have  coffee  ?" 

"Because  I  think  it  injurious"  —the  keen  old  eyes 
caught  the  swift  disdain  of  the  child's  glance  at  the  half- 
empty  cup  on  the  tray — "very  injurious  for  children," 
she  added. 

"My  mother  didn't  think  so,"  Yal  said,  feeling  her 
throat  swell. 

"  But  I  am  your  grandmother,  you  see." 

108 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

She  had  lowered  her  chin  again  ;  her  eyes  were  shooting 
out  over  her  spectacles,  her  eyebrows  terrifically  high. 
This  grandmother  of  hers  could  move  her  eyebrows  about 
as  easily  as  other  people  moved  their  arms  and  legs.  It 
was  a  fearsome  accomplishment. 

"In  my  house,"  she  went  on,  after  the  awful  pause, 
''the  thing  to  be  considered  is  what  /  think.  Among 
other  matters  I  consider  your  way  of  entering  a  room 
might  be  improved.  Now,  you  may  see  how  quietly  you 
can  go  out." 

Seldom  has  a  child  been  more  surprised  at  an  unex 
pected  turn  in  affairs  than  was  this  one  when  she  found 
herself  on  the  outside  of  the  door.  She  stood  irresolute 
a  moment.  Why  had  she  obeyed  ?  She  gritted  her  little 
white  teeth  in  self  -  contempt.  Should  she  go  back  ? 
There  were  loads  of  things  she  had  forgot  to  say.  The 
idea  of  being  sent  out  like  that  !  She  went  slowly  up 
stairs  and  angrily  tumbled  some  of  her  clothes  out  of  her 
trunk.  There  were  three  cookies,  a  cruller,  and  some 
chocolates  in  a  box  near  the  bottom.  Oh,  wise  precaution 
of  provident  childhood  !  Still,  her  present  lot  was  a  most 
unhappy  one. 

"No  breakfast!  How  angry  my  poor  sainted  mother 
would  be  !"  She  shed  two  tears.  "No  mother,  no  coffee, 
nothing  but  a  cruel  grandmother." 

She  revelled  gloomily  in  the  tragic  picture  till  she  heard 
Emmie  coming  up-stairs.  She  hid  the  "  remainder  biscuit " 
and  hurriedly  dried  her  eyes.  There  had  long  been  a 
theory  in  the  family — even  her  mother  had  shared  it — 
that  Val  never  cried,  and  hadn't  any  heart  to  speak  of. 
She  was  intensely  proud  of  this  reputation  for  stoicism, 
and  wouldn't  for  worlds  have  undeceived  any  one.  She 
brushed  past  Emmie  now  with  lofty  looks  and  ran  down 
stairs  and  out-of-doors.  She  ranged  about  the  grounds, 
finding  that  her  father  was  right — there  were  great  possi 
bilities  of  enjoyment  in  these  neglected  haunts.  She  was 
not  long  in  discovering  the  grape-vine  climbing  the  pear- 
tree  in  the  wilderness,  and  satisfying  herself  that  "peaches 

109 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

were  ripe."  The  osage  orange-trees  that  grew  along  the 
fence  behind  the  drying-ground  had  dropped  their  rugged 
globes  on  the  grass,  and  one  could  play  ball  with  these 
oranges  till  their  tough  fibres  grew  soft  and  yielded  grudg 
ingly,  like  rubber.  Presently  one  that  she  had  sent  flying 
over  the  trees  into  the  adjoining  grounds  came  mysteri 
ously  back.  Val  parted  the  fringe  of  lower  undergrowth 
and  peered  between  the  fence  rails,  but  could  see  no  one. 
She  shied  another  orange,  and  this  time  she  saw  a  boy  dart 
out  from  behind  a  tree  and  send  the  orange  swiftly  through 
the  sunshine  over  her  head.  Val  leaped  up,  and  by  a  fluke 
caught  it  firmly  in  her  hands. 

"Hooray!"  came  involuntarily  from  the  next-door 
neighbor  ;  and  they  went  on  playing  ball  in  ambush  till 
curiosity  prevailed  over  shyness. 

When  the  next-door  neighbor  drew  near  the  osage  bar 
rier,  he  revealed  himself  as  a  boy  about  V til's  age,  with  a 
freckled  face  and  a  queer  little  knob  of  a  nose. 

"  Wot's  your  name  ?"  he  inquired. 

"  Val  Gano.     What's  yours  •"' 

"  Jerry — I  mean,  Jerningham  Otway." 

"  That  your  house  ?'' 

She  climbed  upon  the  fence  and  distinguished  glimpses 
through  the  bushes  of  an  imposing  place  beyond. 

"Yes,"  he  answered;  "and  we  got  a  bank  over  the 
river." 

This  eliciting  nothing,  he  went  on,  genially  : 

"  You  can  fire  a  ball  'bout  as  well  as  a  boy  !" 

"  I  should  hope  so." 

"My  sister  can't,  and  she's  a  year  older  'n  me.  Most 
girls  can't,  and  they're  all  awful  mad  they  wasn't  born 
boys." 

"That  so?" 

"Yes.  I  know  a  girl  over  the  river — awfully  jolly  girl- 
she's  got  a  monkey — nicest  girl  I  ever  knew  ! — and  Geeru- 
salem  !  don't  she  want  to  be  a  boy  !" 

"  She  must  be  a  ninny/'  observed  his  next-door  neighbor. 

"  Hey  ?" 

110 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  Can't  think  why  any  girl  in  her  senses  should  want  to 
be  a  boy !"  as  who  should  say  :  the  least  of  created  things. 

Jerry  widened  saucer  eyes. 

"If  a  girl  likes,"  his  neighbor  continued,  "she  can  do 
all  the  jolly  things  a  boy  does  without  the  bother  of  being 
a  boy/' 

"  Ho  !  ho  !     Don't  find  it  much  bother/' 

"  Well,  but  it's  a  little  dull,  ain't  it  ?" 

"Hey  ?" 

"Not  now  exactly,  but  don't  you  ever  think  about  the 
future  ?" 

Jerry  looked  vaguely  alarmed  for  a  single  instant,  and 
then  strutted  off  with  his  hands  in  his  pockets,  whistling 
defiantly  all  across  the  lawn.  He  stopped  at  the  barn  door, 
and  whistled  his  way  back,  in  time  to  catch  a  friendly 
ball. 

The  feminine  wile  that  eventually  won  the  young  gentle 
man's  heart,  and  "  did  for"  the  girl  with  the  pet  monkey, 
was  Val's  gift  for  turning  the  most  surprisingly  rapid 
somersaults  all  across  the  drying -ground.  A  small  con 
torting  ball,  she  rolled  head  over  heels,  without  stopping, 
from  one  side  to  the  other,  and  came  up  smiling,  in  spite 
of  a  crack  on  her  crown  against  the  pump. 

"  Gee-r«salem  I"  observed  Jerry,  when  he  saw  she  was 
laughing.  "  I  say,"  he  added,  with  a  child's  fine  disregard 
for  preface  or  preliminary — "  I  say,  come  over  to  Bentley's 
Pond  and  let's  be  pirates." 

It  seems  highly  probable  that  Val  would  have  closed  with 
the  offer  if  Emmie  had  not  made  a  timely  appearance. 

"  What  you  doin'  ?"  she  asked,  Jerry  being  invisible. 

"None  o'  your  business,"  said  her  polite  sister. 

"  Oh-h,"  purred  Emmie.     "  Gamma  don't  let  us — " 

She  paused. 

"Don't  let  us  what?" 

"  What  you're  doin'." 

"What  am  I  doin'?" 

It  was  difficult  to  say.  She  seemed  to  be  just  sauntering 
about,  occasionally  kicking  an  osage  orange.  But  Emmie, 

111 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

not  without  reason,  had  got  it  into  her  law-abiding  head 
that  whatever  this  sister  of  hers  might  be  engaged  in  it 
was  pretty  sure  to  be  something  taboo,  and  Emmie,  as  an 
older  inhabitant  here,  and  one  who  never  made  these  mis 
takes,  was  bound  to  keep  the  new-comer  from  transgres 
sion.  Her  sister  had  gone  back  to  the  house  now.  Emmie 
followed  her  up-stairs  to  their  room.  Yal  found  her  trunk 
gone  from  the  upper  hall,  and  its  contents  disposed  in 
drawers  and  wardrobe  with  Emmie's  belongings. 

Who  had  done  this  thing  ? 

"  Yenie,"  said  Emmie. 

The  new-comer  anathematized  the  officious  servants  of 
the  Fort.  Emmie  stood  looking  on  with  growing  conster 
nation,  as  Val  flung  forth  from  the  wardrobe  to  the  middle 
of  the  room  a  shower  of  pinafores  and  petticoats,  books  and 
toys.  They  lay  on  the  floor  in  an  indiscriminate  mass. 
What  was  this  daring  person  about  ?  Emmie  stood  shyly 
by  the  door,  her  face  flushing  with  excitement. 

"  I  won't  have  my  things  mixed  up  with  other  peoples'  !" 
Vul  announced,  severely.  Then,  after  a  moment  :  "  What 
are  you  standing  there  for  ?" 

"  I— I  don't  know,"  responded  Emmie. 

14  Haven't  you  got  any  place  of  your  own,  where  you  be 
long  ?" 

Emmie  looked  bewildered,  as  well  she  might. 

"I've  got  a  little  rocking-chair  down  in  gamma's  room 
— used  to  be  cousin's  Efan's." 

""  Humph  !  rocking-chair's  just  the  thing  for  you  !  Why 
don't  you  go  and  sit  in  it  ?" 

Val  was  clearing  out  the  bureau  now  at  the  other  end  of 
the  room.  It  was  Emmie's  things  this  time  that  were  being 
flung  out  with  disdain.  Val's  harsh  question,  coupled  with 
the  moving  spectacle  of  Emmie's  best  hat  on  the  floor, 
brought  ready  tears  to  the  soft  brown  eyes. 

"What  you  got  in  this  ?"  demanded  Val,  shaking  the 
rattling  contents  of  a  well  tied-up  box. 

"  B'Jongs  to  cousin  Efan.     Gamma  don't  let  us  open  it." 

Val  untied  the  cord  and  revealed  the  forbidden  spoil— 

112 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

marbles,  a  jack-knife,,  a  broken  whistle,  and  at  the  bottom 
a  little  drawing-book  and  a  French  grammar. 

"I'll  take  care  of  the  marbles  and  the  knife  for  cousin 
Ethan/7  said  Val,  "but  you  can  have  the  other  things," 
and  she  flung  the  treasured  box  to  the  opposite  side  of  the 
room.  The  vandalism  widened  Emmie's  trouble-clouded 
eyes.  "Now  rny  clothes  are  going  in  the  bureau." 

Val  was  sorting  and  folding  away  her  own  belongings 
with  a  deftness  characteristic  of  her  thin  little  hands. 
Emmie  watched  the  process  tearfully. 

"  And  my  books  and  things  like  that  go  on  this  side," 
she  went  on,  busily  bringing  order  out  of  chaos.  "  Now, 
do  you  understand  ?"  she  said,  sternly.  "This  half  o'  the 
room  is  mine.  You  can't  ever  come  here." 

The  little  girl  at  the  door  nodded,  speechless. 

"  Perhaps  I'll  help  you  afterwards  to  put  your  things 
away  in  the  cupboard.  First  go  down  into  the  hall  and 
bring  me  a  piece  of  chalk  out  of  the  lift-up  chair  where 
they  keep  the  brushes." 

"  Chalk  !"     What  was  she  going  to  do  ? 

"Yes,  chalk,  goosie  gander  !     Chalk  !  chalk  !" 

Emmie  fled.  She  had  serious  thoughts  of  never  return 
ing,  but  curiosity  and  the  memory  of  her  best  hat  sitting 
on  the  floor  got  the  better  of  her  fears. 

"That's  right,"  said  Val,  on  Emmie's  reappearance. 
"  Don't  come  over  here  !"  she  shouted.  "  Stop,  I  tell 
you  !"  She  stamped  violently  as  the  child  advanced,  be 
wildered,  holding  out  a  piece  of  yellow  crayon.  "Didn't 
I  just  say  this  part  of  the  room  is  mine  ?" 

"Y-yes." 

"  Well,  it  is,  just  as  much  as  if  it  had  doors,  which  it 
ought  to  have,  and  locks  and  bolts.  Don't  ever  come  here 
till  you  get  my  permission.  Understand  ?" 

"I — I —  Emmie  dropped  the  crayon,  and  retreated 
slowly.  "  I  was  only  going  to  say  we  oughtn't  to  use  that 
chalk.  It  belongs  to  Aunt  Valeria's  painting  things." 

"Look  here!"  Val  waived  such  puny  scruples  aside. 
"See  this  seam  in  the  carpet  ?" 

113 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  Yes,"  answered  a  small,  scared  voice. 

"  Well,  I'll  make  it  plainer,  so's  there's  no  mistake."  She 
stooped  and  drew  a  yellow  line  down  the  seam  from  wall  to 
wall.  "  Now,"  she  said,  getting  up  and  striking  a  threat 
ening  attitude,  "  you're  younger  than  me,  but  I  give  you 
all  that  side  for  your  room.  This  side  is  mine.  If  you 
ever  cross  that  line  without  my  leave,  I'll  kill  you — yes,  I'll 
kill  you  dead  with  cousin  Ethan's  knife  !" 

She  turned  her  head  and  beheld  her  grandmother  stand 
ing  in  the  doorway. 


CHAPTER  IX 

THIS  was  the  beginning  of  the  Four  Years'  War. 

But  although  Val  was  worsted  in  this  encounter,  the  race 
was  sometimes  to  the  swift  and  the  battle  to  the  ingenious. 
For  instance,  that  very  night  in  bed  she  discovered  a  way 
of  reducing  Emmie  to  submission  without  resorting  to 
physical  violence.  Val  began  to  tell  out  loud  a  terrible 
and  harrowing  tale,  which  nearly  threw  the  younger  child 
into  fits.  Emmie  would  do  anything  for  her  dear,  dear  sis 
ter  if  only  darling  Val  would  say  the  black  figure  wasn't  a 
ghost.  Darling  Val  complied,  after  a  thorough  under 
standing  that  whenever  Emmie  was  too  unbearable  that 
black  figure,  which  was  a  ghost  only  on  certain  nights — 
that  black  figure  should  be  introduced  into  their  nocturnal 
amenities.  Val  was  not  always  as  good  as  her  word.  She 
did  once  or  twice  in  the  comfortable  daytime  make  the 
sinister  threat,  "  If  you  do  that  again  Fll  tell  you  a  scary 
story  when  we're  in  bed  to-night";  but  in  the  morning  the 
night  is  almost  as  far  away  as  being  grown  up  or  dying — at 
all  events  too  far  off  to  seem  very  real  or  important.  Ex 
perience  proved  that  Val  would  forget  the  menace  by  the 
time  it  was  dark,  or  else  would  be  too  sleepy  to  live  up  to 
it — so  sleepy,  in  fact,  that  she  could  do  nothing  but  kick 
Emmie  in  a  desultory  way,  or  lie  like  a  log  in  the  middle 
of  the  bed,  leaving  the  younger  child  to  find  her  half  on 
the  outer  edge  of  both  sides  ;  whereupon  Emmie's  long- 
suffering  patience  would  suddenly  break  down,  and  she 
would  go  crying  to  her  grandmother's  door,  and  stand 
there  wailing  till  she  was  taken  in.  After  some  weeks' 
trial  the  plan  of  making  the  two  sisters  share  the  same 

115 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

room  was  abandoned,  and  Emmie  had  a  cot  at  the  foot  of 
her  grandmother's  four-poster. 

Val  was  made  to  realize  that  now  she  had  crossed  the 
Rubicon.  Up  to  that  hour  she  had  been  on  probation,  but 
this  change  once  effected,  she  was  "beyond  the  pale." 
Not  that  she  was  harassed,  nagged,  scolded  ;  that  she 
would  have  understood  and  known  how  to  meet ;  she  was 
ignored,  not  spoken  to,  not  even  seen.  For  days  she  might 
have  been  thin  air,  so  little  did  her  grandmother  seem  able 
to  realize  her  corporal  presence.  There  had  been  no  doubt 
in  Vat's  mind  from  the  first  but  what  Emmie  was  the  fav 
orite  here.  The  very  servants,  she  saw,  were  under  the 
spell  of  Emmie's  pretty  ways,  and  in  any  time  of  trouble 
took  it  for  granted  that  the  imperious  Val  had  been  the 
aggressor.  Natural  and  inevitable  as  was  this  attitude  of 
the  entire  household  (for  Mr.  Gano  was  spared  all  details, 
and  did  not  count),  it  was  not  calculated,  to  make  the  sis 
ters  better  friends,  or  win  Val  to  a  more  amenable  mind. 

Nobody,  from  Val's  point  of  view,  could  care  much  about 
what  Jerusha  and  Venie  thought,  but  her  grandmother's 
good  opinion  was  somehow,  even  at  this  stage,  a  secretly 
coveted  honor.  Yet  there  was  no  blinking  the  fact  Emmie 
was  her  pet.  This  form  of  putting  the  hard  underlying 
fact  was  the  more  satisfactory  in  that  one  could  as  soon 
imagine  Mrs.  Gano  dancing  the  Highland  fling  as  having 
a  pet.  Gran'ma!  who  wouldn't  let  a  dog  or  even  a  bird 
into  the  house,  and  whom  no  one  could  fancy  nursing  or 
caressing  anything  on  earth  !  There  was  a  suggestion  of 
the  ludicrous,  a  faint  ironic  aroma,  in  the  phrase,  which 
aroused  angry  passions.  It  fitted  in,  too,  with  all  manner 
of  exigencies.  In  any  event  it  was  apposite  to  remark, 
•'  Of  course  Emmie's  the  pet."  This  could  be  said  with  such 
effect  of  scorn  that  Emmie  found  no  refuge  save  in  tears. 

"  What's  the  matter  ?"  inquired  Mrs.  Gano. 

She  had  happened  on  the  twain  as  they  were  loitering  in 
the  hall  before  going  off  to  church. 

Emmie  wept  on.  Val  set  her  little  red  mouth  doggedly. 
Her  grandmother  glared. 

116 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"Now  what  have  you  been  doing  to  this  poor  child?" 
she  demanded. 

Gran'ma's  eyes  were  very  strange  when  she  was  angry, 
as  Val  had  frequently  confided  to  the  cobwebs  in  the  wood 
shed — unlike  anybody's  on  earth—piercing,  glittery  ;  made 
you  cold  down  your  back.  Servants  shook  and  scuttled 
when  she  looked  at  them  like  that.  Val  herself  was  always 
reminded  of 

"Tiger,  tiger,  burning  bright 
In  the  forests  of  the  night," 

and  braced  herself  by  saying,  internally  :  "I  ain't  'fraid  o' 
tigers  and  I  ain't  'fraid  o'  gran'ma  " — this,  too,  with  a  fine 
sense  of  climax. 

"  What  is  it,  Emmie  ?  Stop  crying.  I  can't  have  this 
noise." 

"  V — Val  says  Fm  your  p — pet." 

"Nonsense!  I  have  no  pets.  You  are  not  to  worry 
Emmeline.  Never  say  that  again.  Understand  ?" 

Val  was  silent. 

Gran'ma's  eyes  were  awful. 

"Are  you  going  to  promise,  or  do  you  prefer  to  spend 
the  day  alone  ?" 

That  had  been  tried,  and  proved  a  great  waste  of  time 
and  opportunity. 

"  Yes,  I  promise." 

"Very  well ;  now  go  to  church  ;  Venie  is  waiting." 

"Aha  !"  said  the  victorious  Emmie  when  they  were  out 
of  earshot.  "  Now  you  see  what  you  get  for  teasing  me." 

And  she  crowed  over  her  comrade  with  restored  vivacity, 
till  Val  said,  with  suspicious  geniality  : 

"Oh,  well,  I  s'pose  I  was  mistaken.  I  knew  you  were 
either  her  pet  or  else — " 

"What?" 

Emmie  fixed  her  beautiful  soft  eyes  expectantly  on  her 
sister. 

Val  turned  on  her  with  suppressed  fury  : 

"Or  else  a  creepin',  crawlin'  little  woo — er — er — m." 

117 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

Floods  of  tears,  and  Venus  to  the  rescue. 

The  Four  Years'  War  did  not  always  rage  round  Emmie, 
although  it  was  the  innocent  little  sister  who  was  the  means 
of  forcing  upon  Val  the  conviction  that  her  grandmother 
was  not,  and  never  could  be,  her  friend.  It  is  true  she 
cherished  a  dream  at  first  of  earning  her  gratitude  and  ad 
miration  by  some  splendid  heroic  deed  that  should  cover 
her  grandmother  with  shame  at  the  memory  of  the  way 
she  had  misunderstood  and  undervalued  her  descendant. 
The  house  would  be  on  fire  some  day,  and  Val  would 
"save  all  their  lives";  or  a  robber  would  get  in  in  the 
night,  and  by  a  series  of  thrilling  adventures  Val  would 
entrap  and  lock  him  up  in  the  closet  under  the  stairs, 
where  that  silly  old  Jerusha  said  there  was  a  ghost ;  or  the 
ancient  nag  that  sometimes  came  from  the  livery-stable  to 
take  her  father  and  grandmother  out  for  an  airing — this 
steed  would  unexpectedly  run  away  some  fine  day.  Val 
saw  herself  dashing  out  of  the  bushes  at  the  road-side,  seiz 
ing  the  bit,  and  hanging  on  to  it  till  she  brought  the  frantic 
animal  to  a  stand-still.  Then  her  grandmother  would  say  : 
"Dear,  brave  child,  we  owe  you  our  lives,"  etc.  "How 
I've  misunderstood  you  !"  etc.  Val  would  be  magnani 
mous,  and  forgive  everything.  She  had  a  fixed  intention 
of  saying  in  reply  •  "  Gran'ma,  let  the  dead  past  bury  its 
dead."  Her  grandmother  would  feel  that.  But  until  that 
day  came,  how  was  she  to  endure  all  this  injustice  and  op 
pression  ?  Emmie  was  her  grandmother's — well,  she  took 
Emmie's  word  about  everything,  and  Emmie  counted  on 
that.  She  didn't  play  fair,  and  she  was  an  awful  cry-baby ; 
couldn't  climb  trees,  or  even  run  hard  without  falling  down 
and  hurting  herself  and  saying  it  was  Val's  fault.  Then 
for  the  rest  of  the  day  her  grandmother  would  treat  Val 
like  an  outcast,  and  dock  her  of  Jerry's  society.  How  sick 
ening  it  was  to  be  told  Emmie  was  the  littlest,  and  delicate  ! 
Val  herself  had  at  one  time  been  "  only  six,"  but  she  hadn't 
been  a  sniveller ;  she  had  always  played  fair  and  never 
cried.  Ask  anybody.  They'd  all  say  Val  Gano  never  cried. 
Whereupon  she  would  steal  away  to  the  wood-shed,  or  climb 

118 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

up  high  in  the  catalpa  -  tree,  remind  herself  she  had  no 
mother,  shed  a  private  tear  or  two,  and  tell  herself  a 
story. 

After  all,  the  only  serious  blemishes  in  the  scheme  of 
creation  were  grandmothers  and  Sundays.  Now  that  Val 
had  renounced  religion,  she  could  not  but  look  on  the  day 
of  rest  as  an  interruption  and  a  time  of  bondage,  when 
grandmothers  and  grandmothers'  views  pervaded  creation 
to  creation's  cost. 

On  the  third  Sunday  after  the  arrival  at  New  Plymouth 
she  announced  that  she  was  not  going  to  church. 

"I  don't  want  to,  either/'  whispered  Emmie.  " Let's 
pertend  we're  very  ill." 

"No  ;  let's  just  say  we  won't  go." 

"Better  not,"  admonished  the  cautious  Emmie.  "I 
think  my  throat  is  going  to  be  sore." 

So  Emmie  was  duly  cosseted  by  Aunt  Jerusha,  and 
given  delicious  black-currant  jelly. 

Mrs.  Gano,  hearing  rumors  of  rebellion,  had  sent  for  Val. 
She  was  dressed  and  sitting  in  the  big  arm-chair  before  the 
fire  with  a  book  on  her  knees.  It  was  quite  warm,  but  she 
couldn't  apparently  do  without  a  fire  and  a  shawl.  She 
was  seldom  seen  about  the  house  in  these  days  without  a 
shawl.  She  must  have  had  hundreds  —  white  and  black 
and  gray,  striped  and  dotted;  silk,  cashmere,  canton -crepe. 
Her  gowns  all  seemed  to  be  made  of  rusty  black  silk.  They 
were  so  exactly  alike  that  Val  thought  for  long  she  had  but 
one.  There  was  always,  too,  the  inevitable  and  spotless 
lawn  at  the  throat ;  no  frivolous  ruffle  or  after-thought  of 
tie  —  nothing  set  on,  extraneous,  but  smooth  white  folds 
that  seemed  to  grow  up  out  of  the  dress — an  integral  part 
of  the  plain  and  changeless  uniform  that  was  the  outward 
and  visible  sign  of  one's  grandmother's  severe,  uncompro 
mising  spirit. 

"  What's  this  I  hear  ?  Why  are  you  not  dressing  for 
church  ?" 

"I — I  don't  feel  like  going  to-day." 

"Are  you  not  well  ?" 

119 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  Ho  yes" — very  contemptuous.     "I  never  get  ill." 

"Then  you  must  go  to  church.  It's  the  custom  in  this 
house." 

"  Venie  says  you  go  only  twice  a  year.  Fll  go  when  you 
do." 

The  old  hidy's  eyes  hhized  behind  her  gold  spectacles. 

"  You'll  go  when  you  are  told.'*  Awful  pause.  "  AY  hen. 
you  are  my  age  you  may  suit  yourself." 

"  Father  hasn't  had  to  wait  all  that  time;  he  doesn't  go 
now." 

"Your  father  is  very  ill." 

"  Didn't  go  when  he  was  well  ;  that  is,  hardly  ever," 
added  the  explicit  young  person. 

"He  went  regularly  as  a  boy,  before  he  had  a  house  of 
his  own.  But  I'm  not  accustomed  to  arguing  with  children. 
Go  and  get  dressed." 

Val  wavered  a  moment,  then  faced  about  gravely.  She 
planted  herself  before  the  old  lady,  with  the  wide-apart 
legs  and  tense  look  of  one  who  braces  herself  to  bear  the 
crack  of  doom. 

"I'm  sorry  to  hurt  your  feelings,"  she  said;  "but  I'm 
a  infidel." 

"What!" 

"Yes  ;  father  and  I  are  both  infidels." 

"Hush  !  you  don't  know  what  you're  saying." 

"Oh  yes,  I  do.  lie  says,  'Damn  it!'  when  you're  not 
there." 

"  How  dare  you  !" 

"  I  don't,  but  father  does,  so  you  see — 

"  I  see  that  you  talk  wildly  and  ignorantly,  as  well  as 
too  much.  Go  and  dress  for  church." 

She  had  half  risen,  her  eyebrows  had  risen  wholly.  She 
looked  singularly  alarming.  Val  retreated  backwards  to 
the  door,  and  Mrs.  Gano  resumed  her  seat. 

"I  ain't  so  igorunt  as  you  think,"  the  child  persisted. 
"The  reason  I  stopped  going  to  church  was  because  my 
conscience  wouldn't  let  me  join  in." 

Mrs.  Gano  turned  and  looked  at  the  child  over  the  back 

120 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

of  her  arm-chair.     There  was  a  gleam  of  amused  tolerance 
in  the  steely  eyes.     Val  was  quick  to  detect  it. 

"  You  see,  it's  not  worth  while  to  waste  the  whole  morn 
ing  nearly  when  the  only  thing  you  can  join  in  is  a  piece 
they  don't  do  every  Sunday/' 

"  Which  is  that  ?"  asked  Mrs.  Gano,  in  an  odd  voice. 

She  had  turned  away  again,  and  Val  couldn't  see  her 
face  now. 

"That  long  piece  about  the  weather." 

"The  weather?" 

"  Yes — lightnings,  and  whales,  and  things.  Don't  you 
know  that  one  ?  It's  like  this."  She  put  her  hands  be 
hind  her,  and  shrilly  intoned  :  "  '  0  ye  green  things,  angels 
and  fowls  of  the  air,  praise  Him  and  magnify  Him  for-r- 
rever.  0  ye — ' " 

"That  will  do,"  interrupted  Mrs.  Gano,  in  a  stifled 
voice. 

Val  felt  snubbed  ;  there  was  a  lot  more  that,  with  en 
couragement,  she  would  have  endeavored  to  do  justice  to. 
She  felt  for  the  door-handle,  but  paused  again  on  the 
threshold. 

"  Mayn't  I  go  and  sit  with  father  ?" 

"  Certainly  not ;  you  are  to  go  to  church." 

"  Gran'ma."  There  was  a  renewal  of  courage  in  the  clear 
little  voice.  With  a  bound  she  planted  herself  in  front  of 
the  old  lady's  chair.  "  I  oughtn't  to  go.  It's  pertending  ; 
it's  wicked.  For  I  can't  say  the  'I  b'lieve'  any  more." 

Mrs.  Gano  rose  in  her  wrath  and  towered.  Val  stood  to 
her  guns,  looking  up  with  determined,  excited  face. 

"  I  used  to  join  in  when  I  was  younger :  I  used  to  bow, 
just  like  mother.  Father  never  bowed.  /  don't  any  more, 
neither." 

Mrs.  Gano  seized  her  by  the  shoulder  and  propelled  her 
to  the  door.  Wild  thoughts  of  dungeons  and  burned 
martyrs  flew  through  the  child's  mind.  Still  clutching  the 
infidel,  Mrs.  Gano  opened  the  door.  In  an  awful  voice  she 
called  : 

"  JerjLisha  !     Venus  !" 

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THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

Venus  appeared  with  perturbed  countenance,  out  of 
which  all  genial  companionableness  had  fled.  Yes,  that 
was  the  kind  of  face  an  executioner  might  wear. 

"  Take  Miss  Val  tip-stairs  and  get  her  ready  for  church." 

Venus  took  hold  of  the  child  none  too  gently,  and  pulled 
her,  wriggling  vainly,  up  the  long  staircase.  It  was  no  use 
to  cling  feverishly  to  the  banisters  ;  it  only  hurt  her  hands. 
Half-way  up  Venus  stopped  for  breath.  Val  looked  back 
to  see  if  her  grandmother  was  still  there.  Yes;  leaning 
exhausted  against  the  frame  of  the  door,  with  her  handker 
chief  to  her  lips.  Now  Venus  was  dragging  her  on  again. 
In  a  fresh  access  of  rage  the  child  put  her  chin  over  the 
banisters  and  screamed : 

"  All  the  time  they're  doing  the  <I  b'lieve,'  I  shall  go 
like  this."  She  shook  her  head  with  such  passionate  dis 
sent  that  her  shock  of  wild  hair  swirled  madly  back  and 
forth  in  a  cloudy  circle,  completely  hiding  the  mutinous, 
flushed  face  of  the  infidel. 

Very  soon  after  the  formal  removal  of  Emmie  and  her 
effects  to  her  grandmother's  bedroom,  Val  gave  up  the  last 
lingering  shred  of  hope  that  she  might  ever,  while  these 
misunderstood  days  of  childhood  lasted,  propitiate  the 
powers  that  be.  She  was  always  feeding  her  imagination 
in  secret  with  stories  of  the  ultimate  love  and  adoration, 
not  only  of  the  suitors  and  heroes  who  should  line  her  path 
later  on,  but  of  her  family,  too.  They  and  the  entire  com 
munity  should  adore  her  one  day  for  something  wonderful 
and  noble  that  she  was  going  to  be  and  to  do  in  that  fair 
future  when  she  should  be  grown  up  and  great  and  good. 

Meanwhile  there  were  moments  when  this  sense  of  pres 
ent  outlawry  brought  with  it  a  fierce  and  splendid  joy.  It 
endowed  even  a  down-trodden  child  with  a  superhuman 
courage.  Such  a  one  might  even  go  and  plump  herself 
down  in  the  great  red  chair  of  state,  and  rock  violently 
back  and  forth  in  a  wild  abandonment  of  wickedness,  while 
Emmie  stood  transfixed  and  gran'ma's  awful  eyes  made 
lightning.  An  outlaw  so  brave,  she  could  narrate  un 
moved  that  she  had  taken  a  ride  in  the  milkman's  cart. 

122 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

And  he  had  been  "so  perlite  as  to  ast  me  how  was  Grand 
mother  Gano."  This  horrible  insult  on  the  part  of  the 
milkman  was  duly  punished,  but  Val  had  a  momentary 
sense  of  having  "got  even."  In  the  .South — in  any  civil 
ized  community,  Mrs.  Gano  would  have  told  you — you  did 
not  call  people  "  old  "  ;  it  had  foolishly  enough  come  to  be 
a  term  of  reproach,  or  at  least  of  scant  respect,  fit  only  for 
"any  old  thing"  of  no  account.  Therefore,  let  alone  the 
"owdacious  "  familiarity  of  asking  after  a  lady  as  "  Grand 
mother"  So-and-so,  you  couldn't  even  with  decency  dis 
tinguish  the  elder  lady  from  her  daughter-in-law  by  asking 
after  old  Mrs.  So-and-so.  In  the  South,  where  manners 
were  still  understood,  you  said  "senior"  and  "junior,"  or, 
among  the  better  class, you  called  the  son's  wife  "Mrs.'"  So- 
and-so,  and  you  called  the  head  of  the  family  "Madam." 

"  Grandmother  Gano,  indeed  !     I'll  grandmother  him  !" 

It  was  a  great  score,  too,  when  Julia  Otway,  Jerry's 
nearly  two  years  older  sister,  assured  Val  that  that  com 
mon  term  of  reproach  "  Grannie,"  was  a  corruption  of  the 
ancient  and  honorable  title  Gran'ma.  Inseparably  associ 
ating  the  word  with  the  drunken  rag-picker,  "  Ole  Granny 
Gill,"  and  the  scathing  juvenile  satire,  "Teach  your  granny 
to  suck  eggs,"  etc.,  Val  determined  on  the  next  provocation 
to  introduce  the  subject  at  home.  She  found  occasion  to 
dilate  on  the  virtues  of  Julia  Otway's  grandmother.  This 
was  a  shrunken  and  timid  old  lady,  who  sat  unnoticed  in  the 
corner,  clicking  her  knitting-needles,  and  usually  saying 
nothing.  When  she  did  speak  it  was  found  her  speech 
was  odd,  and  the  children  laughed. 

"  Nearly  everybody  else's  gran'ma  knits  stockens,"  Val 
observed  one  day,  with  critical  eyes  on  the  eternal  book 
open  on  Mrs.  Gano's  knees. 

"You  know  very  few  grandmothers,"  said  the  lady. 

"I  know  Julia's.  She's  so  nice.  I  don't  wonder  Julia 
and  Jerry  like  her." 

This  elicited  nothing. 

"She's  the  kindest  person.  She  keeps  a  little  chest  o* 
drawers  chock-full  o'  doughnuts  and  winter-green  candy." 

123 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"Very  strange  use  for  a  chest  of  drawers.  Is  the  lady 
right  in  her  head  ?" 

Val,  very  indignant :  "  Goodness  gracious  !  mercy  me  ! 
I  should  think  so  !"  . 

"I've  told  you  not  to  use  those  exclamations." 

"No,  you  didn't  say—" 

"  Do  I  understand  you  to  be  contradicting  me  ?" 

"You  said  I  wasn't  to  say  'Oh,  Lord  !'  nor  *  Gee-rusa- 
1cm  !'  nor  'Dear  me  suz  !'  nor  '  Holy  Moses  !'  I  don't  see 
what  there's  left  to  say." 

"I  said  let  your  speech  be  'Yea,  yea/ and  'Nay,  nay.' 
You  are  not  to  bring  sacred  names  into  common  talk. 
The  Jews  of  old  had  a  proper  instinct  for  these  tilings. 
They  never  uttered  the  name  of  Jehovah  even  in  prayer. 
No  Jew  would  step  upon  a  piece  of  parchment,  for  fear  it 
migkt  be  inscribed  with  the  name  of  God.  It  is  impious 
to  call  upon  the  mercy  of  the  Most  High  on  trivial  occa 
sions.'' 

"  I  don't  call  on  Him — never." 

"  Yes,  you  do,  when  you  use  those  expressions.  God  is 
'gracious' ;  He  alone  is  ' goodness. "; 

Silence  ;  then  Val,  recovering  and  returning  to  the  at 
tack  : 

"Jerry's  grandmother — 

"Jerningham  Ot way's  grandmother  knows  as  well  as  I 
do  that  this  is  a  turbulent  and  stiff-necked  generation, 
without  fear  of  God  or  reverence  for  authority.  Her  rem 
edy  seems  to  be  effacement  for  herself  and  bribes  for  her 
young  barbarians.  But" — she  had  risen,  and  was  tower 
ing — "I'd  have  you  know,  my  lady,  I'm  not  a  doughnut 
grandmother." 

Val  thought  it  time  to  depart.  She  moved  briskly  to 
the  door,  sending  over  her  shoulder  a  Parthian  shot : 

"Julia  calls  her  gran'ma  "  Granny,"  and  so  do  lots  o' 
people.  It  seems  it's  the  reg'lar  name." 

Thereupon  she  took  to  her  heels,  for  even  outlaws  know 
limits. 

At  a  safe  distance  she  would  speculate  darkly  :  "I  won- 

124 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

der  if  she  knows  I  hate  her.  Oh  yes  ;  it  would  be  a  waste 
of  breath  to  mention  it.  She  knows,  and  she  doesn't  care 
— she's  that  hardened." 

It  was  clear  at  such  times  that  this  Ishmaelite's  hand 
must  be  against  every  man,  and  every  man's  hand  against 
her.  All  consideration  of  decent  restraint  had  been  flung 
to  the  winds.  She  had  turned  her  back  on  the  hallowed 
customs  of  society,  and  joined  the  iconoclasts  of  earth. 
She  would  even  at  times  plant  her  elbows  on  the  dinner- 
table  before  everybody,  with  a  wild,  despairing  sense  that 
nothing  mattered  forever  any  more.  Nobody  loved  her. 
Even  her  father  didn't  want  her  about  him  since  his  re 
lapse.  He  said  she  came  in  like  a  whirlwind  on  the  rare 
occasions  when  she  was  admitted  to  his  room.  She  should 
never  forget  that  day  when  he  said  :  "  Why  can't  you  be 
quiet  and  good  like  Emmie  ?"  Like  Emmie  !  Val  fled  to 
the  wilderness,  and  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  barberry- 
bush  flung  out  her  arms  and  apostrophized  the  heavens. 
She  talked  a  great  deal  to  herself  in  those  days — arraigned 
society,  and  used  long  words  with  vague  meaning,  but 
studied  accent  and  overwhelming  effect.  However,  in 
spite  of  the  difficulty  of  life,  Val  found  it  an  exhaustless 
mine  of  interest.  Being  naughty  alone  was  full  of  palpi 
tating  excitement.  Besides,  she  was  much  better  than  her 
family  realized  ;  that  of  itself  was  curious,  and  at  times 
sufficient.  At  any  rate,  she  was  not,  as  she  frequently  ob 
served  to  the  scarlet  barberries — she  was  not  a  sniveller. 
Fortunately,  it  did  not  occur  to  her  that  the  circumstance 
might  be  less  creditable  to  her  than  she  fondly  imagined. 

Her  quarrel  with  domestic  conditions  lent  a  fine  tragic 
interest,  in  her  own  mind,  to  a  life  that  was  deep-rooted  in 
joy.  It  was  impossible  not  to  be  happy,  such  a  splendid 
world  as  it  was — a  world  with  skipping-ropes  and  a  stolen 
jack-knife  in  it ;  a  world  where  an  awful  jolly  boy  lived  on 
the  other  side  the  osage-trees,  and  liked  you  better  than 
that  favorite  of  fortune  who  had  a  pet  monkey  ;  a  world 
with  wild  tracts  below  its  terraces  where  grandmothers 
ceased  from  troubling,  and  hard  -  pressed  heroines  could 

125 


THE    OPKN    QFESTION 

hide  and  talk  out  loud.  A  new  house  building  in  the  next 
lot,  with  ceilings  open  to  the  sky,  and  instead  of  common 
floors,  great  beams  where  a  child  who  "never  was  'fraid" 
could  walk  up  and  down  with  its  heart  in  its  mouth  ; 
blocks  to  be  picked  up,  and  a  kind  workman  to  talk  to 
when  it  was  cold  and  gran'ma  wasn't  patrolling  the  north 
side  of  the  Fort.  Even  for  rainy  afternoons  there  were  the 
beloved  Scottish  Chiefs;  there  were  jack-stones,  and  a 
family  next  door  who  owned  a  barn.  Oh,  a  splendid  world, 
where  you  got  twelve  winter-green  drops  for  a  cent,  and 
could  play  on  your  father's  fiddle  in  the  back  hall  !  lloo- 
ray  !  it  was  a  good  plan  this  being  born. 


CHAPTER  X 

peculiarity  of  life  at  the  Fort  was  that  although 
visitors  in  general  were  in  high  disfavor,  everybody,  from 
Mrs.  Gano  down  to  Jerusha — especially  Jernsha — was  al 
ways  hoping  for  a  visit  from  cousin  Ethan.  And  he 
never  came.  The  last  vacation  before  Yal's  arrival  Em 
mie  said  he  had  had  to  go  with  the  Tallmadges  to  Bar  Har 
bor.  This  June  he  couldn't  come,  because  his  aunt  Han 
nah  had  died,  and  his  grandfather  was  alone  ;  but  he 
thought  he  might  come  "  later  on."  Now  that  the  maples 
were  scarlet  and  gold,  he  wrote  regretfully,  saying  that, 
after  all,  he  had  to  go  back  to  Harvard  without  any  holi 
day.  He  sent  his  love  to  his  cousins,  and  the  annual  pho 
tograph —  which  she  had  commanded  to  be  taken  each 
year — to  his  grandmother.  She  had  a  row  of  them  on  the 
mantel-piece  in  her  room.  When  the  new  one  came  like  a 
falling  leaf  each  autumn,  she  spent  anxious  days  deciding 
which  of  the  old  ones  should  go  in  a  drawer  to  make  room 
for  the  latest.  There  were  three  that  never  yielded  to  any 
new-comer,  however  beguiling.  Ethan's  cousins,  it  must 
be  admitted,  who  were  ardent  admirers  of  the  more  recent 
pictures,  thought  little  enough  of  Mrs.  Gano's  favorite  three. 

The  first  was  of  a  child  about  three  years  old  in  his 
night-gown — a  dreamy  little  face  framed  in  a  halo  of  curl 
ing  hair.  Yes  ;  it  was  more  like  an  angel  than  a  fiesh-and- 
blood  boy,  but  it  was  yellowed  and  faded,  and  not  taken  at 
an  interesting  age,  so  his  two  cousins  thought. 

The  next  was  a  very  solemn  little  chap  with  a  tiny  pail 
in  his  hand,  dressed  in  a  kilt,  and  wearing  a  wide  white 
collar,  seeming  to  labor  hopelessly  with  a  wooden  spade 
in  a  world  of  unmitigated  woe. 

127 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

The  third  had  been  taken  in  Paris  with  his  school  friend 
Henri  de  Poincy,  and  he  had  on  "funny  French  clothes," 
but  he  held  his  slender  figure  very  easily  erect,  and  with 
out  seeming  to  remember  he  was  having  his  photograph 
taken.  He  had  written  from  Neuilly  to  his  grandmother : 

"  I  always  think  of  my  summer  at  the  Fort  when  I  go 
to  have  your  picture  done." 

If  that  were  the  case,  this  time  the  remembrance  must 
have  been  a  gracious  onje,  for  his  dark  little  face  was  lit, 
expectant,  beautiful. 

"  Why  did  he  go  to  France  ?"  Val  had  asked. 

"  Oh,  some  nonsense  about  accent,  as  if  the  only  accent 
to  be  considered  was  the  French."  '  Mrs.  Gano  threw  back 
her  head.  "And  then  a  cousin  of  the  Tallmadges  married 
a  Frenchman,  a  man  called  De  Poincy.  The  mother  died, 
and  left  a  boy— 

"  That  awful  little  ape  in  the  pho—     I  mean  Henri  ?" 

"  Yes  ;  Henri,  a  very  nice  boy." 

Mrs.  Gano  would  not  have  prolonged  the  conversation, 
but  Emmie  said  : 

"I'm  sure  he's  nice.  Cousin  Ethan's  letters  always  say 
beautiful  things  about  Henri.  Do  go  on." 

"I've  told  you  scores  of  times." 

As  if  that  were  not  the  flimsiest  reason  for  not  repeating 
a  stock  tale,  half  of  whose  charm  is  its  familiarity. 

"Didn't  cousin  Ethan  find  Henri  at  the  Tallmadges' 
when  he  got  back  ?" 

"  Yes,  after  that  summer  he  spent  here."  The  old  eyes 
were  mild.  "And  although  Henri  was  a  couple  of  years 
older,  the  two  boys  set  up  a  sort  of  David  and  Jonathan 
league.  And  when  Henri's  father  sent  for  him  to  come 
back  to  France — they  said — humph  !" 

The  mildness  vanished  in  a  sudden  blaze. 

"  What  did  they  say  ?" 

Again  Mrs.  Gano  threw  back  her  head. 

"  Ethan  had  been  coming  here.  We  had  his  room  all 
ready  for  him,  and  Valeria  had  bought  pink  wax-candles 
for  his  dressing-table —a  most  unnecessary  extravagance 

128 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

for  a  boy,  as  I  told  her.  And  as  for  Jerusha,  she  wasted 
half  her  mornings  brightening  up  Ethan's  knocker  on  the 
front  door,  and  the  rest  of  the  time  she  was  making  cinna 
mon  rolls.  And,  after  all — humph  !"  she  said,  with  some 
thing  rather  near  to  a  snort. 

"Then  those  Tallmadges  wrote,  didn't  they?"  said  Em 
mie,  gently  applying  the  spur. 

"  Ho,  yes,  the  Tallmadges  wrote.  The  children  were 
heart-broken  at  the  idea  of  separating,  and  so  they  had  to 
let  Ethan  go  to  Neuilly  with  the  De  Poincy  boy." 

"  To  improve  his  accent  I"  added  Emmie,  with  borrowed 
scorn. 

"  Oh  yes  ;  I  admitted  in  my  reply  that  Ethan's  accent  was 
no  doubt  again  in  need  of  improvement,  but  it  had  not 
been  necessary  to  send  him  so  far  afield  as  France/' 

"  How  long  did  he  stay  ?"  asked  Val. 

"Three  years.  He  came  back  the  summer  you  were 
born.  He  was  nearly  ten." 

"Well,  it's  a  good  thing  he  came  back.  He  does  look  a 
gump  in  those  French  clo's — I  mean  " — Val  caught  herself 
up  hurriedly,  seeing  how  unpopular  the  observation  was — 
"  I  mean,  I  like  him  best  in  proper  American  things. 
This  last  picture's  scrumptious  !" 

After  this,  it  was  not  only  gran'ma  and  An'  Jerusha  who 
held  the  Fort  in  readiness  for  Ethan's  coming,  eager  to 
capitulate  at  the  first  blow  on  the  door  ;  but  two  little 
girls  as  well,  in  their  different  ways,  set  their  faces  towards 
the  day  when  E.  Gano's  big  brass  knocker  should  be  lifted 
by  E.  Gano's  own  hand. 

School  had  been  postponed,  partly  because  Mrs.  Gano 
was  too  anxious  about  her  son's  health,  and  too  absorbed 
in  the  task  of  convincing  him  indirectly  that  life  was  worth 
living,  to  take  the  necessary  steps  for  entering  her  grand 
daughter  in  the  Primary  Department  of  the  Plymouth 
Seminary  for  Young  Ladies.  But,  besides  this  preoccupa 
tion,  it  was  recognized  that  the  fall  term  was  already  far 
advanced,  and  it  might  be  as  well — it  was  certainly  more 
economical  —  to  wait  till  after  Christmas.  However,  the 
i  129 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

growing  discomfort  and  complication  of  having  so  objec 
tionable  a  child  about  hastened  the  beginning  of  Vat's 
school  days. 

With  great  misgiving,  and  full  of  suspicion,  Val  took 
her  place  at  a  little  hacked  and  initialed  desk  in  the  down 
stairs  school  one  fine  day  towards  the  middle  of  November. 

But  we  are  forever  being  disappointed  of  our  direst  fears, 
as  well  as  of  our  dearest  hopes.  She  found  that  she  soon 
got  the  "hang"  of  the  lessons;  that  her  next-door  neigh 
bor,  Julia  Otway,  was  the  nicest  girl  in  school,  and  very 
soon  her  "  best  friend" ;  that  Val  herself  could  run  faster 
than  anybody  in  the  games  at  recess  ;  and  that  she  had 
fallen  blissfully  under  the  spell  of  pretty  Miss  Matson,  the 
primary  teacher,  who,  strange  to  say,  seemed  to  like  Val. 

The  bustling  life  at  the  Plymouth  Seminary  for  Young 
Ladies,  full,  varied,  delightful,  would  perhaps  be  considered 
by  the  professional  biographer  of  vital  importance  in  mould 
ing  a  young  person's  character  ;  for  was  this  not  the  time 
and  the  place  of  her  education  ?  One  is  inclined,  in  Val's 
case,  at  any  rate,  to  say  no.  She  learned  by  rote,  at  that  ex 
cellent  institution,  certain  more  or  less  useful  things,  and, 
more  important  still,  she  made  two  or  three  dear  friends, 
who  taught  her  much  of  value  about  the  human  heart; 
but  for  the  most  part  she  was  educated  at  home.  There, 
and  not  at  school,  she,  in  common  with  many  young  peo 
ple,  found  the  influences  that  made  her  what  she  ultimate 
ly  became. 

Her  father,  if  he  understood  the  matter  so,  naturally  did 
not  so  express  himself.  Perhaps  he  thought  this  child  of 
his  had  too  little  of  the  Gano  love  of  books,  and  was  over- 
fond  of  running  breathless  races,  and  playing  ball  with  the 
neighbor's  boy. 

"  You  came  here  to  go  to  school,  you  know.  You've 
played  all  your  life  up  to  this.  Now  you  must  begin  to 
work.  This  is  a  very  important  time  in  your  life." 

"  Is  it  ?" 

Val  sat  up  very  straight,  with  shining  eyes  and  an  air  of 
pleased  responsibility. 

130 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  Oh,  very  important,  indeed.     For  now  you  have  still 
time  to  decide  what  kind  of  a  woman  you're  going  to  make 
of  Val  Gano." 
"  Oh,  have  I  ?" 
He  nodded. 

"  You  can  make  up  your  mind  you  won't  be  a  dull,  ig 
norant  person,  all  your  life  bound  in  shallows  and  in  mis 
eries." 

"  No,  indeed,"  she  said,  with  vigor. 
"  It's  in   your   power   now  to  take  the  necessary  steps 
towards  some  better  fate.     By-and-by  it  will  be  too  late  : 
you'll  be  like  the  crooked  catalpa  in  the  terrace,  grown 
awry  and  too  old  to  straighten  out." 

"No,  I  shall  be  like  the  tulipifera  rhododendron." 
He  laughed. 

"You  are  ambitious,  my  dear";   and   then  he  sighed. 
"  Few  come  up  to  tulipifera.     Now,  I  am  far  enough  from 
being  a  rich  man,  and  I  can't  give  my  daughters  a  fortune ; 
but  I  can  give  them  something  far  more  valuable." 
"  Now  ?" 

"  Yes,  Fve  begun  giving  it.     I  mean  an  education." 
"  Oh  !" 

This  was  a  blow. 

"  See  that  you  make  the  most  of  it.     It  will  put  a  key 
in  your  hands  that  can  unlock  a  hundred  doors  to  happi 
ness.     I  am  doing  with  you— only  a  little  more  helpfully 
perhaps— what  the  Swedish  peasant  did  with  his  eldest  son." 
"  What  did  he  do  ?" 

"He  took  the  boy  up  to  the  top  of  the  highest  hill  in 
the  country,  and  said,  '  You  are  young,  my  son,  but  I  am 
about  to  give  you  your  inheritance.    Look  abroad' — and  he 
stretched  out  his  arms—' behold,  I  give  you  the   world! 
Go  forth  and  take  what  portion  you  will." 
Val  drew  a  quick  breath. 
"  Ha  !  I  know  what  /  want." 
"What  do  you  think  you  want,  little  girl  ?" 
"I  want  to  be  loved — oh,  but  tremendously!     And  I 
want  to  do  some  one  thing  awfully,  awfully  well." 

181 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

It  was  the  most  old-fashioned,  nnchildlike  speecli  of 
which  Yal  had  ever  delivered  herself. 

"Well,  my  dear,"  her  father  spoke,  dreamily,  "to  be 
greatly  loved,  and  to  do  well  some  one  piece  of  work,  isn't 
a  bad  destiny.  Older  heads  than  yours  would  be  at  a  loss 
to  better  it." 

Even  to  her  father,  even  in  that  moment  of  great  out 
going,  she  had  not  liked  to  particularize  what  it  was  she 
wanted  to  do  so  "awfully,  awfully  well."  But  there  was 
no  doubt  in  her  own  mind  that  she  was  going  to  be  a 
dancer.  She  practised  every  rainy  day,  and  sometimes 
when  it  didn't  rain,  down  in  the  dark  parlor,  where  it 
smelt  so  solemn  and  musty.  There  was  a  huge  oil-paint 
ing  on  the  north  wall,  of  Daniel  Boone  and  his  dogs  and 
other  friends  "  Discovering  Kentucky."  Although  their 
eyes  were  turned  ever  towards  "  the  dark  and  bloody 
ground,"  they  were  Val's  audience.  To  the  burly  hunter 
and  his  raccoon-capped  and  shaggy  companions  she  bowed 
and  pirouetted,  waved  her  arms  and  tossed  her  heels.  She 
did  not  dare  touch  the  old  rosewood  piano  after  one  or  two 
rapturous  attacks  upon  the  yellow  keys  had  brought  swift 
retribution  out  of  her  grand  mother's  chamber;  but  dan 
cing  was  not  only  a  glorious  and  heady  excitement,  but,  un 
like  most  of  this  young  person's  pastimes,  it  was  noiseless  ; 
it  could  be  carried  on  by  the  hour  without  rousing  any 
one's  suspicions,  unless  perchance  a  vague  uneasiness  as  to 
"what  keeps  that  child  so  quiet."  When  discovered,  she 
was  usually  found  to  be  breathlessly  examining  the  gilt- 
edged  annuals  and  gift-books  on  the  centre  table,  or  else 
staring  into  the  "stereopticon,"  though  what  view  was 
visible  in  that  dim  light  remained  a  marvel. 

Perhaps  the  most  memorable  crisis  of  her  childhood  had 
found  her  in  the  twilight  of  that  musty  parlor.  It  was  a 
pale-gray,  teeming  spring  morning,  after  a  night  of  rain — 
Saturday,  and  yet  she  had  been  forbidden  to  go  and  see 
her  friends  next  door. 

"  When  1  was  a  little  girl  I  didn't  live  at  the  neigh 
bors'." 

132 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

Val  had  been  learning  lessons,  perched  in  the  high  win 
dow-seat  of  her  own  room,  looking  out  now  and  then  with 
a  glad  sense  of  coming  summer  to  the  early  red  of  maple 
blossoms,  and  off  to  the  blue  Mioto  Hills,,  that  rose  on  the 
other  side  the  river,  shutting  in  her  world.  Presently, 
down  below  the  rain-soaked  terraces,  in  Mioto  Avenue,  a 
street-organ  began  to  play. 

She  dropped  her  book  and  leaned  farther  out.  A  watery 
gleam  of  sunshine  fell  on  the  warm,  dripping  world.  The 
smell  of  earth  came  up  fresh,  and  full  of  a  mysterious 
promise.  The  "grind-organ,"  as  the  children  called  it, 
sang  and  clanged.  Val  beat  the  swift  time  with  her  fist  on 
the  stone  sill,  and  her  dangling  feet  moved  staccato  to  the 
tune.  She  half  closed  her  eyes.  Ah  !  now  she  could  see 
better.  She  was  gliding  through  a  brilliant  scene  at  a  ball. 
She  was  just  sixteen,  and  dressed  in  blue  and  silver,  and 
there  was  a  throng  about  her — all  lovers  !  There  were  no 
women,  save  those  that  looked  enviously  on  from  a  far 
background  of  flower-festooned  wall.  The  faces  near  the 
blue-and-silver  maiden  were  chiefly  strange,  but  all  noble 
and  beautiful.  All  these  the  generous  future  would  pro 
vide,  but  one  or  two  she  recognized  as  having  followed  her 
out  of  the  present.  There  was  cousin  Ethan  as  he  looked 
in  the  last  picture,  Jeriy — and,  well  in  the  foreground, 
Jerry's  handsome  elder  brother,  and  certain  other  less- 
known  young  townsmen  not  to  be  spared  from  the  gay 
group  of  gallants  ;  but  they  were  destined,  every  man  Jack 
of  them,  to  break  their  faithful  hearts.  She  smiled  and 
waved  her  geography — her  fan,  of  course — and  each  young 
gentleman  took  courage.  But  wait  !  In  a  minute  she 
would  be  carried  off  by  the  tall, dark,  fierce-eyed  hero,  who 
lived  somewhere  —  somewhere — not  in  ballrooms,  except 
as  the  eagle  may  swoop  into  the  valley — not  in  cities,  but 
in  some  mountain  fastness  in  the  kingdom  at  the  end  of 
the  world. 

Many  a  time  she  had  wondered  how  they  were  to  meet, 
how  he  was  ever  to  know  that  she  lived  with  a  cruel  grand 
mother  in  New  Plymouth.  Ha  !  now  it  was  plain.  The 

133 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

organ  had  ground  out  the  truth.  She  would  run  away  by- 
and-by.  He  would  see  her  somewhere  dancing,  and  he 
would  say  "Eureka!"  "Ah!"  she  would  say,  "but  I'm 
half  engaged  to  my  next-door  neighbor,  or  to  the  Duke  of 
Daffy-down-dilly."  "What  does  that  matter  to  me?" 
Whiff  !  he  would  carry  her  off,  and  say  she  should  lovo 
him,  whether  she  liked  it  or  not.  Oh,  it  was  wonderful  ! 
— it  was  palpitating  to  lie  in  the  dark,  or  in  the  pale  spring 
sunshine,  with  shut  eyes,  and  think  about  this  king  of 
men,  who  would  not  be  denied.  Yal  couldn't  remember  a 
time  when  she  had  not  told  herself  stories  with  this  fruitful 
theme  for  inspiration.  The  proud,  dark  figure  had  come 
dimly  out  of  the  fairy  world,  and  had  grown  more  human 
and  distinct  day  by  day.  He  began  by  being  a  prince,  and 
for  some  years  he  wore  a  gold -embroidered  velvet  robe. 
By  degrees  he  adopted  a  less  and  less  striking  attire,  which, 
however,  had  never  yet  degenerated  into  mere  modern 
evening  dress.  The  noble  gentleman  could  not  be  ex 
pected  to  put  off  his  romantic  melancholy  along  with  his 
royal  robes,  for  a  large  part  of  the  excitement  of  this  game 
of  the  imagination  lay  in  the  lady's  proud  rejection  of  his 
suit,  and  flight  from  the  fortress  where  he  thought  to  hide 
her — his  hot  pursuit — his  being  baffled,  disappointed,  and 
reduced  to  wild  despair  before  his  ultimate  victory.  And 
this  final  triumph  (oh,  strong  survival  of  the  savage  in  the 
female  breast  !)  was  invariably  a  triumph  of  arms.  Xot 
even  to  a  hero  who  was  handsome,  and  tall,  and  strong 
as  a  giant  ;  not  even  to  a  hero  half  bandit,  half  blameless 
knight,  that  every  other  girl  in  the  world  pined  for,  that 
every  man  envied  and  must  needs  honor — not  even  to  such 
a  one  will  the  untutored  dreamer  yield  herself  a  willing 
bride.  A  willing  bride  !  The  very  phrase  offends  some 
ancient  canon  fixed  against  self-abandonment  in  the  very 
blood  and  bone  of  womankind. 

Can  it  be  that  in  the  ages  unrecorded,  before  men  going 
hence  left  behind  them  laws  on  stone,  or  testament  on 
papyrus,  the  women  of  that  far-off  time  had  inscribed  a 
legend  on  the  hearts  of  all  their  sex,  graved  it  so  deep  and 

134 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

plain  that  a  little  girl  of  the  nineteenth  century  (casting 
about  for  stories  to  send  herself  to  sleep)  may  read  it  in 
the  dark  after  all  those  aeons  have  gone  by  ?  Can  it 
be  that,  reading  and  understanding  this  language,  which 
being  dead  yet  speaketh,  knowing  the  ancient  mother- 
tongue  better  even  than  her  father's  own,  she  takes  the 
legend  for  a  text,  obeys  it  as  a  natural  law,  and  thrills  to 
it  as  did  her  old  ancestress  of  the  cave  and  tent,  smiling 
covertly,  and  deliciously  afraid  ? 

The  fresh  wind  blew  the  child's  wild  hair  across  her 
face ;  the  sun  shone  down  more  golden  ;  the  organ  jangled 
through  its  tunes.  Now,  with  a  jerk  of  restlessness, 
it  abandoned  "II  Trovatore"  and  struck  into  a  waltz. 
Ha  !  the  window  -  seat  was  too  cramped.  She  slid  down 
and  began  to  dance.  Gran'ma's  voice.  The  little  girl 
stopped  suddenly,  opened  the  door,  and  went  sedately 
down-stairs,  with  her  lesson  books  conspicuously  in  evi 
dence.  At  the  bottom  she  stopped  and  listened.  Cautious 
ly  she  opened  the  parlor  door  and  closed  it  behind  her.  She 
flung  her  books  down  and  coursed  wildly  round  the  centre 
table,  as  one  sees  a  dog  just  let  out  of  the  kennel  celebrate 
his  liberty.  Suddenly  she  stopped  and  bowed  solemnly  to 
Daniel  Boone,  saying  under  her  breath  : 

"Now  I'm  the  greatest  dancer  on  the  earth.  Now 
they're  all  applauding.  Now  I  make  three  courtesies.  They 
clap  and  clap  till  I  begin  again.  This  is  the  most  wonder 
ful  dance  of  all." 

She  started  afresh,  curving  her  arms  above  her  head, 
fantasticating  steps,  some  graceful,  some  grotesque,  whirl 
ing  faster  and  faster  to  the  rhythm  that  was  beating  in  her 
brain.  Suddenly  a  dark  face  looked  out  of  the  throng  in 
that  theatre  of  her  imagination,  and  she  knew  it  was  the 
face  of  her  fate.  There  was  the  Duke  of  Daffy-down-dilly, 
too,  leaning  out  of  a  box  and  applauding  as  hard  as  he 
could.  The  dark  man  sat  quite  still,  but  his  eyes  gleamed. 

After  the  last  great  dance,  which  was  called  "  The  Fili 
gree  Finale  "  (all  the  dances  had  beautiful  names),  the 
Duke  threw  her  a  bouquet  of  roses,  and  held  out  his  arms. 

135 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"I  spurn  the  flowers."  She  kicked  out  a  scornful  foot. 
"I  turn  my  back.  Oh,  it's  deafening  the  way  they're  ap 
plauding  !" 

Suddenly,  in  the  heartless  process  of  dancing  away  from 
plaudits  and  a  duke,  she  stopped  short  as  if  she  had  been 
shot.  The  color  fled  out  of  her  face,  and  her  thin  hands 
dropped  limp  at  her  side.  There  was  a  kind  of  terror  in 
her  eyes  as  presently  she  moved  forward,  dragging  her 
wings,  so  to  speak,  to  the  opposite  end  of  the  room,  where, 
over  a  marble-top  table,  an  old-fashioned  mirror  reflected 
Daniel  Boone.  The  child  peered  into  the  glass,  but  it  was 
dark,  and  the  marble-top  table  held  her  at  arm's-length. 
She  could  only  see  dimly  the  top  of  her  head.  She 
dropped  down  in  a  miserable  little  heap  between  the  claw 
feet  of  the  table.  Perhaps  she  alone  of  all  the  heroines  of 
earth  was  not,  never  could  be,  beautiful  !  It  had  never 
occurred  to  her  before.  A  thousand  recollections  seemed 
to  rush  at  her  at  once  to  fasten  the  fear  in  her  heart,  to 
make  it  hideous  certainty.  If  she  had  been  going  to  be 
beautiful,  would  not  some  one  have  mentioned  it  ?  Emmie 
had  heard  a  thousand  times  how  pretty  she  was.  Cousin 
Ethan  was  known  to  be  the  most  beautiful  of  boys.  As  to 
VaFs  looks,  why,  she  was  so  little  a  credit  to  a  handsome 
race  that  nobody  could  be  got  to  own  her.  Hadn't  her 
mother  said,  "  Emmie  is  like  me  ;  but  Yal — I  suppose  she's 
more  like  you"?  and  her  father  had  hurriedly  disclaimed 
the  faintest  resemblance  between  his  eldest  daughter  and 
himself.  Her  grandmother  had  said:  "You  are  not  like 
my  side  of  the  house,  and  I  don't  see  a  trace  of  the  Gano 
in  you.  I'm  sure  I  don't  know  where  you  came  from." 
Ah,  it  was  clear  she  had  not  referred  to  mere  wickedness. 
She  was  repudiating  her  descendant's  plainness.  The 
child  put  her  hands  over  her  face.  But  it  was  incredible 
that  this  blow  at  the  root  of  joy  was  meant  for  her.  She 
dropped  her  hands,  taking  heart  of  grace.  Katie  O'Flynn, 
the  cook  in  New  York,  had  said,  in  some  interval  of  truce, 
that  Val  had  "  rale  Oirish  oyes,"  and  she  had  said  it  with 
no  accent  of  condolence.  If  only  she  hadn't  added, 

136 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"They're  put  in  wid  smutty  fingers,  me  darlint !"  Even 
at  the  time  Val  had  felt  the  last  remark  tactless,  and  had 
changed  the  subject,  but  now— 

"  Oirish  oyes  !"  It  was  meant  well,  but  it  had  a  horribly 
common  sound.  It  was  another  way  of  saying,  ' i  You  look 
like  the  cook."  And  yet — and  yet  no  one  had  ever  cared 
so  much  about  being  beautiful  before.  She  would  have 
submitted  gladly  to  letting  those  "  rale  Oirish  oyes  "  be 
torn  out  and  the  poor  quivering  little  body  be  hacked  in 
pieces  if  only  it  might  be  put  together  in  a  truer  harmony. 
But  there  were  ugly  people  in  the  world,  who  began  ugly, 
and  went  on  being  ugly  to  the  bitter  end.  How  had  she 
come  to  take  it  so  for  granted  that  beauty  belonged  to  her 
as  a  right  ?  There  was  Miss  Tibbs,  who  lived  near  by  in 
Mioto  Avenue.  Think  of  being  like  that !  with  taily  hair, 
and  little,  little  eyes,  and  teeth  that —  No  !  no  !  no  !  She 
struggled  to  her  feet,  storming  up  into  the  high  window- 
seat,  and  straining  till  she  opened  the  near  window,  and 
could  force  back  the  heavy  shutter,  letting  in  a  flood  of 
light.  But  it  was  not  the  sudden  glory  of  the  day  that 
made  the  child  blink  and  draw  back  so  suddenly.  Miss 
Tibbs  was  passing  the  gate. 

"  Good-morning,"  said  that  lady,  looking  more  appalling 
than  ever. 

"It's  like  that— like  that  Fll  be,"  thought  the  child, 
tumbling  to  the  ground. 

Feverishly  she  swept  the  card -basket  and  the  books  off 
the  table.  Then,  drawing  up  a  chair,  she  climbed  up  on 
it,  clinching  her  teeth  and  setting  her  jaws  to  bear  the 
shock  that  perhaps  awaited  her.  And  still  there  was  hope 
in  her  heart  as  she  leaned  forward  on  the  marble  top  and 
looked  into  the  mottled  glass  with  imploring  eyes.  Slow 
ly  the  tears  gathered.  In  mute  agony  she  turned  away, 
climbed  off  the  table,  and  hung  limp  over  the  back  of  the 
chair. 

"  Oh,  God,  Fm  ugly  !"  she  said,  and  clung  there  with 
shut,  hot  eyes.  The  moments  passed.  "I  can't  bear  it, 
God.  Let  me  die  !" 

137 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

The  strained  voice  was  muffled  in  her  clinched  little 
jaws,  and  with  her  fists  she  beat  helplessly  on  the  back  of 
the  old-fashioned  chair.  Presently  she  slipped  down  to 
the  floor,  and  wandered  aimless  about  the  room.  When 
she  came  near  the  glass  again  she  glanced  with  a  sharp  con 
viction  of  intolerable  shame  at  the  top  of  a  shaggy  head, 
which  was  all  that  she  could  see.  Even  that  was  too  much. 
She  flew  to  the  window  and  drew  the  shutters  to,  feeling 
she  should  never  be  able  to  bear  the  light  again. 

"What  did  You  make  me  for?"  she  cried,  arrested  an 
angry  instant,  facing  sharply  about,  as  though  confronting 
an  enemy.  "  I  didn't  want  to  come  if  I  had  to  be  ugly  !" 
She  slid,  down  off  the  window-seat,  and  walked  quickly  to 
and  fro  with  rising  anger.  "  It  would  have  been  so  easy, 
too,  for  You.  Just  think  what  it  means  to  me  !"  She 
stopped  and  looked  heavenward.  The  "  Oirish  oyes" 
were  blazing.  "  I  should  think  You'd  prefer  things  pretty 
for  yourself.  But  if  You  don't,  why  do  You  go  and  spoil 
it  all  for  me  ?"  And  so  on,  in  frantic  young  fashion,  she 
beat  her  wings  against  the  old  prison-house.  For  between 
the  origin  of  evil  and  the  origin  of  ugliness  there  is  no 
great  gulf  fixed  in  the  female  mind. 

Looking  back  long  afterwards  on  this  hour  of  anguish, 
she  could  not  laugh,  as  philosophic  grown-up  folk  are 
pleased  to  do,  at  the  sorrows  of  childhood.  She  knew  that 
that  morning  in  the  musty  parlor  was  one  of  the  bitterest 
experiences  life  had  brought  her,  simply  because  it  hud 
come  to  her  as  a  child,  for  whom  beauty  was  as  yet  a  con 
ventional  physical  perfection,  and. not  the  high  soul  of 
things. 

After  the  one-o'clock  dinner,  she  had  shaken  Emmie  off, 
and  gone  out  to  walk  up  and  down  in  the  warm  wind  be 
hind  the  house.  She  had  come  out  bareheaded,  and  her 
shock  of  wild  hair  was  blown  about  almost  as  if  some  one 
were  saying  the  "I  b'lieve,"  and  the  Windgeist,  or  some 
other  "der  stets  verneint,"  had  borrowed  Yal's  form  of 
dissent. 

She  was  a  thin  slip  of  a  girl,  and  no  one  seeing  her  would 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

have  much  wondered  that  this  young  worshipper  of  ob 
vious  red-cheeked,  dimpled,  yellow-haired,  picture-book 
beauty,  had  been  bitterly  disappointed  with  the  thin  little 
face,  its  irregular  lines  and  faint  coloring,  the  good-sized 
mouth  in  lieu  of  the  heroine's  puckered  rosebud,  the  tawny 
no  color,  all  colors,  hair,  that  merely  waved  distractingly 
instead  of  curling  ;  the  black  eyebrows  and  lashes,  too  well 
defined — yes,  "smutty";  the  long,  deep-set  gray  eyes,  that 
no  wishing  could  make  blue  before  the  glass,  but  that 
sometimes,  out  in  the  sunshine,  changed  to  turquoise,  and 
sometimes  in  the  dusk  or  lamplight  were  limpid,  gleaming 
black. 

"  Hello  !"  said  Jerry,  through  the  osage-trees. 

"  Hello  !" 

"  What's  the  matter  ?" 

"Nothing/7 

"Been  getting  it  ?" 

"Don't  be  an  idiot  !" 

"Come  and  fish  !" 

"Can't." 

"  Does  Mrs.  Gano  make  you  stay  here  ?" 

"  She  can't  make  me  do  anything." 

"  Then  come.     I'm  going  to  Bentley's  Pond." 

Val  wavered.  She  might  fish  even  if  she  was  ugly.  In 
fact,  as  she  came  to  think  of  it,  it  was  one  of  the  few 
things  left  to  do — that  and  disobeying  gran'ma. 

"All  right;  wait  a  minute." 

She  went  in-doors  for  her  hat.  A  sense  of  returning 
life  came  warmly  over  her.  She  could  still  fish.  Fishing 
alone  was  a  career.  She  had  a  panoramic  glimpse  of  her 
self  through  the  future  years — fishing  morning,  noon,  and 
night ;  in  all  weathers  and  in  every  clime  ;  as  a  young  lady, 
fishing  ;  fishing  as  a  woman  ;  as  an  old  bent  crone,  still  fish 
ing —  fishing  forever  and  forever,  her  head  tied  up  in  a 
veil.  She  planted  a  Tarn  o'  Shanter  on  her  wind-blown 
hair,  thinking  :  "  I  won't  begin  with  a  veil  to-day.  I  don't 
mind  Jerry — he's  ugly,  too." 


CHAPTER  XI 

CLOSE  as  was  her  relationship  with  her  father,  there  was 
more  than  one  thing  she  never  told  him.  She  never  spoke 
of  her  grandmother's  brutality.  She  sympathized  with 
him  silently  for  having  such  a  mother,  and  felt  that  they 
were  fellow -sufferers  under  her  iron  rule.  Did  she  not 
make  him,  too,  do  things  he  didn't  want  to  do — make  him 
go  out  and  walk  when  he  preferred  to  sit  still,  reprove  him 
for  trying  his  eyes  by  the  waning  light,  and  even  at  times 
pass  severe  strictures  on  his  clothes  and  his  opinions  ?  He 
was  much  better  and  stronger  after  a  couple  of  quiet  years 
at  the  Fort ;  but  it  was  cruel  of  her  grandmother  to  speak 
in  that  way  about  his  "yielding  to  lassitude  and  inertia." 
and  hint  that  he  was  "quite  as  well  now  as  many  of  the 
men  who  were  carrying  on  the  work  of  the  world." 

"  Health,"  she  would  say,  "is  a  comparative  term.  Xo 
one  is  perfectly  healthy,  any  more  than  any  one  is  perfect 
ly  good." 

But  this  innocent-sounding  platitude  was  evidently  an 
noying  to  John  Gano.  It  was  after  one  of  these  painful 
talks  about  his  rousing  himself  (of  which  Val  heard  only 
the  concluding  phrases)  that  he  had  tried  to  get  back  into 
the  bank.  It  wasn't  his  fault  that  Mr.  Otway  couldn't 
make  an  opening  for  him.  John  Gano  had  even  been 
urged  into  making  visits  to  Cincinnati  and  New  York  to 
see  if  he  could  find  something.  He  came  back  from  these 
quests  depressed  and  ill,  not  mentioning  in  Val's  hearing 
having  found  anything  but  an  unusually  fine  specimen  of 
the  Ardea  Jterodias,  or  something  of  the  sort,  on  the  far 
Atlantic  coast.  But  for  long  after  these  expeditions  he 
would  talk  vehemently  to  his  mother  of  the  fierce  competi- 

140 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

tion  of  the  great  cities,  of  the  growing  costliness  and  cru 
elty  of  civilization,  and  speak  darkly  of  the  coming  social 
revolution,  when  the  poor  should  learn  their  power.  But 
Val  realized,  and  felt  miserably  certain  her  father  realized, 
that  Mrs.  Gano  did  not  much  concern  herself  with  the 
large  historic  outlook,  that  she  would  have  preferred  know 
ing  her  son  had  secured  a  clerkship,  even  under  some 
bloated  bondholder,  rather  than  hear  that  the  doom  of  cap 
ital  was  nigh,  and  that  Henry  George  was  revolutionizing 
opinion  about  the  land-tax. 

But  this  particular  difference  of  view  was  a  delicate  mat 
ter,  not  seemly  for  a  daughter  to  mention.  Her  father,  be 
ing  a  kind  of  hero,  of  course  never  complained  ;  neither 
would  Val.  His  sense  of  loyalty  even  led  him  to  excuse 
his  mother  when  only  her  own  misdeeds  arraigned  her,  as 
when,  after  Emmie  began  to  go  to  school,  she  was  allowed 
to  stay  at  home  whenever  she  cried,  whenever  it  rained, 
whenever  she  liked — and  Val  never  on  any  pretext  what 
soever. 

"  She  thinks  Emmie  has  a  delicate  chest,  you  see,"  her 
father  had  explained.  "  You  are  such  a  hard  little  nut — 
no  danger  of  your  cracking." 

However,  her  grandmother,  who  seemed,  oddly  enough, 
to  have  some  faint  glimmering  of  justice,  appreciated  Val's 
superiority  in  some  things.  If  she  lost  her  spectacles,  she 
would  say  to  Emmie,  hunting  about  with  big  blind  eyes  : 

"  You  are  good  only  at  losing  things,  my  dear.  Call 
Val." 

Or  if  a  parcel  WAS  to  be  tied  up,  or  something  carefully 
lifted  down  from  a  height,  she  would  trust  Val  rather  than 
anybody  in  the  house.  This  recognition  of  deft-handedness, 
small  claim  on  consideration  as  it  might  seem,  was  still  a 
balm  to  the  child.  She  was  wicked,  she  was  hideous,  she 
was  unloved,  but  she  never  broke  things  as  did  the  adored 
Emmie.  No,  Val  was  at  least  clever  and  quick  in  her  move 
ments  ;  it  might  not  be  much  out  of  the  wreck  of  a  heroine, 
but  it  was  something.  One  other  quality  was  admitted  as 
time  went  on.  If  something  questionable  happened  in  the 

141 


THE    OPEN     QUESTION 

house,  something  that  had  to  be  inquired  into,  it  mine  in 
time  to  be  Val's  privilege  to  be  called  in  to  give  a  faithful 
and  veracious  account  of  it.  Emmie  was  no  keen  observer, 
and  she  was  prone  to  spare  other  people's  feelings  if  her 
own  were  not  too  much  engaged.  Besides,  Emmie  had  a 
high  character  to  sustain  ;  Val,  having  none,  could  brace 
herself  and  tell  the  horrid  truth,  even  about  herself.  One 
proud  day  there  was  a  great  difference  of  opinion  as  to  the 
exact  circumstances  attending  the  breaking  of  one  of  the 
coffee-mugs  of  great-grandfather  Cal vert's  wonderful  and 
priceless  service  of  thin  white  china  with  the  broad  gold 
key.  It  lived  in  the  mahogany  buffet,  and  was  washed  once 
a  year — used,  never  !  Val  was  called  in  before  the  assembled 
household  to  give  her  version,  the  summons  being  solemnly 
prefaced  by  "  I've  never  known  you  to  tell  me  a  lie."  That 
was  what  made  it  so  proud  a  moment,  in  spite  of  the  un 
easy  sense  that  the  tribute  was  not  deserved.  When  Miss 
Brown  had  required  the  girls  in  her  class  to  go  over  the 
arithmetic  lesson  four  times,  no  matter  if  they  were  sure 
they  had  got  the  sums  right  at  first,  Val  had  instructed 
the  entire  Preparatory  Department  to  lay  their  books  down 
on  the  ground  and  hop  across  them.  This  might  next 
morning  be  reported  as  "going  over"  the  sums  as  many 
times  as  Miss  Brown  liked. 

"  You  are  superficial,"  Professor  Dawson  said,  detaining 
Val  one  day  after  the  Latin  lesson  ;  "your  oral  translations 
are  too  often  mere  happy  guesses  instead  of  accurate  knowl 
edge.  You  must  spend  three-quarters  of  an  hour  at  least  on 
your  Latin  alone/' 

After  the  first  fifteen  minutes' application  in  the  evening 
at  home,  Val  would  place  her  grammar  and  her  little  square 
red-edged  Caesar  on  the  chair,  and,  sitting  uneasily  on  them 
for  the  remainder  of  the  prescribed  time,  she  would  look 
at  the  pictures  in  Don  Quixote,  and  read  bits  here  and 
there.  But  she  might  not  have  reported  this  as  having 
"spent  a  whole  hour  on  Caesar,"  had  she  known  that  she 
was  building  up  a  reputation  with  her  grandmother  for  in 
corruptible  truth.  The  commendation  quickened  conscience. 

142 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

As  time  went  on,  it  became  apparent,  too,  that  if  Mrs. 
Gano  loved  her  more  beautiful  and  amiable  granddaughter 
the  best,  she  took  more  interest  in  the  school-work  of  the 
elder  child.  She  looked  over  the  lessons  with,  what  Val 
considered  surprising  understanding,  helping  her  more  and 
more  as  time  went  on,  and  revealing  unexpected  possibili 
ties  in  topics  hitherto  barren.  She  scanned  the  reports 
with  eagle  eye,  and  gave  special  attention  the  following 
week  to  the  study  that  had  had  the  least  satisfactory  marks 
before.  John  Gano  took  only  a  broad  general  interest  in 
the  result,  but  it  came  to  seem  that  there  was  one  person, 
at  any  rate,  to  whom  it  mattered  stop  by  step  if  one  did 
well  or  ill.  She  never  forgot  to  inquire  on  Monday  after 
noon,  "  Have  you  the  medal  ?"  although  the  usual  "  Yes, 
ma'am"-— it  must  have  been  an  easy  honor — elicited  no 
further  word. 

There  was  no  surprise  in  Val's  mind  at  overhearing  a  cer 
tain  colloquy  between  her  grandmother  and  the  Principal 
of  the  Seminary.  A  state  visit  was  made  to  the  Fort  once 
a  term,  and  Miss  Appleby  was  one  of  the  few  people  Mrs. 
Gano  conceived  it  her  duty  to  see. 

The  Principal,  as  Val,  playing  "jack-stones"  in  the  entry 
could  faintly  hear,  was  complimenting  Mrs.  Gano  rather 
fulsomely  on  the  extreme  and  wonderful  cleverness  of  her 
grandchildren.  Val  could  feel  through  the  wall  how  bored 
her  grandmother  was  becoming. 

"  I  had  to  ask  at  the  end  of  the  last  term,"  Miss  Apple- 
by's  mincing  little  voice  went  on,  "if  there  was  only  one 
girl  in  the  Preparatory  Department,  since  I  seemed  always 
to  be  giving  the  medal  to  Valeria  Gano.  Ah,  how  proud — 
how  very  proud  you  must  be  of  your  clever  grandchildren  !" 

"  No,"  said  Mrs.  Gano,  "we  expect  these  things  of  our 
children.  If  they  did  not  do  them,  then  we  might  give 
the  matter  some  thought." 

But  Val  wagged  her  head  wisely  and  tossed  the  jack- 
stones  in  the  air.  Even  Emmie,  with  her  weak  chest,  when 
she  did  go  to  school,  was  expected  to  come  home  wearing, 
on  a  narrow  pink  ribbon,  the  Primary  medal — a  golden 

143 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

shield,  with  "  No  Pains,  no  Gains,"  graven  on  its  face.  Vul, 
heing  "  Preparatory/'  now  wore  the  one  inscribed  "Perse- 
verantia  omnia  vincit"  on  a  ribbon  of  pale  blue,  that  most 
adorable  of  shades.  Emmie  loved  green,  but  also  bore  with 
red;  Vul  would  have  nothing  of  her  "very  best,"  if  she 
could  help  it,  that  was  not  blue.  It  was  not  that  she  had 
quite  recovered  the  shock  of  that  discovery  in  the  parlor 
mirror,  although  she  had  made  up  her  mind,  not  having 
read  Jane  Eyre,  that  biographers  rightly  suppressed  the 
fact  that  many  a  heroine  had  been  in  childhood  not  only 
wicked,  but  ugly,  too  ;  it  was  not  that  she  realized  then 
that  blue  was  "  her  color/' as  the  ladies  say  ;  but  something 
in  her  responded  to  the  hue.  It  made  her  happy  just  to 
open  the  drawer  where  her  blue  sash  was  kept.  In  visions 
of  the  future,  she  had  never  in  her  life  seen  herself  clothed 
in  anything  but  pale  blue.  Sometimes  the  satin  was  broid- 
ered  with  silver  wheat,  sometimes  with  pearls,  but  the  blue- 
ness  of  it  never  faded  or  lost  favor. 

It  was  the  rule  of  the  house  not  to  discuss  the  price  of 
things.  Money  was  not  mentioned,  except  in  a  wide  im 
personal  way.  It  was  difficult  to  believe  for  a  long  time, 
but  it  came  out  by  implication,  that  they  were  poor  ;  other 
wise  Emmie  would  never  have  begged  in  vain  for  the  charm 
ing  green  hat  with  plumes  in  Mrs.  Crumbaker's  millinery 
window.  The  "  not  suitable  for  a  little  girl  "  was  too  thin 
an  excuse  ;  besides,  unsuitability  could  not  be  the  ground 
of  gran'rna's  displeasure  at  the  purchase  of  a  new  micro 
scope,  after  the  shock  of  seeing  what  the  amount  of 
her  son's  book  bill  was  at  the  New  Year.  Very  little  was 
said  on  these  occasions,  but  Vul  was  angrily  conscious  that 
her  father  was  made  to  feel  uncomfortable.  A  grown  man. 
and  a  hero  to  boot  !  It  was  strangely  short-sighted  of  him 
to  let  his  mother  keep  his  money  for  him — as  apparently 
he  did — for  he  evidently  didn't  much  relish  asking  for  it, 
and  he  might  have  learned  from  Val's  experience  that  she 
didn't  like  you  to  spend  your  pocket-money,  except  at  long 
intervals,  in  miserable  driblets.  There  was  only  one  occa 
sion  when  her  father  seemed  more  unwilling  to  open  his 

144 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

purse  than  his  mother  did.  It  was  when  the  doctor's  bill 
of  two  years'  standing  was  left  at  the  door.  It  was  ad 
dressed  to  John  Gano,  Esq.,  and  when  he  opened  it  he 
said,  "  Damnation  !" 

Val,  who  was  doing  lessons  in  a  far  corner,  nearly  dropped 
her  slate.  Mrs.  Gano,  instead  of  reproving  her  son  round 
ly,  looked  over  his  shoulder  and  said,  quietly  : 

"  Very  moderate  indeed  ;"  and  she  tried  to  take  the  paper 
out  of  his  hand. 

But  he  got  up  hastily,  and  paced  the  long  room  with 
knitted  brows. 

"  I  don't  see  how  it's  to  be  met,"  he  said,  presently. 

"No  trouble  about  that,"  she  answered,  calmly;  "I've 
written  Mr.  Otway  I  wish  to  realize  on  some  Baltima'  and 
Ohio  bonds." 

He  turned  sharply  in  his  restless  walk,  and  looked  at  her 
with  curious  emotion.  Then,  quite  low  : 

"  This  is  about  the  last  of  them,  isn't  it  ?" 

"  Oh,  there  is  my  share  of  Valeria's  still  left." 

He  turned  away,  and  continued  his  walk.  His  mother 
watched  him  covertly. 

"  The  waste  of  it,  the  futility,"  he  muttered,  "'bolstering 
up  a  wreck,  instead  of  launching  new  ships.  The  very 
savages  are  wiser.  They  don't  stint  the  young  to  feed  the 
useless,  the  dying." 

"  Don't  talk  nonsense." 

She  looked  very  angry. 

"It's  the  rotten  place  in  civilization,"  he  went  on,  with 
some  excitement — "skin-deep  sentimentality,  and  a  care 
less  cruelty  reaching  down  to  the  core  of  things.  Devices 
of  every  kind  to  keep  the  unfit  here,  while  the  young  and 
strong  starve  in  the  streets.  Hospitals  for  the  hopeless, 
not  even  bread  for  the  ambitious — " 

"Where  is  Emmeline  ?"  interrupted  Mrs.  Gano,  looking 
down  the  long  room  towards  Val. 

"  I  don't  know." 

"  Go  and  find  her,  and  don't  make  her  cry.  I'll  call  you 
both  when  I  want  you." 

145 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

The  next  time  that  Emmie  wept  because  she  couldn't 
have  something  she  saw  in  a  store  window,  Val  realized  it 
was  time  that  she  should  be  taken  into  her  confidence. 
When  they  were  alone  : 

"  Now,  can  you  keep  a  famcrly  secret  ?" 

"  Yes." 

"  Cross  your  heart,  and  hope  you  may  die  if  you  ever 
tell." 

Emmie  complied  with  these  requirements. 

"  Well,  we're  pore,  all  of  us — gran'ma,  too — awful,  awful 
pore,  and  you  mustn't  hurt  their  feelin's  iiskiif  for  green 
hats  and  things." 

"  Tain't  so.     Gamma  ain't  pore." 

"I  tell  you  she  is." 

'•Why'' — Emmie  laughed  her  silvery  little  laugh,  and 
showed  her  small  white  teeth  bewitchingly — "  she's  got  a 
ole  hair-trunk  full  o'  money." 

"No-o-o-o!" 

"  Yes,  she  has.  I  found  a  dusty  ten-dollar  bill  in  the 
fat  blue  china  vase,  and  I  'minded  her  of  it  when  she  said 
she  couldn't  get  me  the  red  cloak  at  Alexander's,  you 
know." 

"  Yes,  yes,  yes  ;  what  'd  she  say  ?" 

"Said  the  little  trunk  in  the  pack-room  was  full  of  bills 
like  that,  but  all  the  same,  I  couldn't  have  the  red  cloak  at 
Alexander's;  that's  why  I  always  cry  when  I  see  it" 
Emmie  wound  up  with  the  air  of  one  who  takes  a  lawful 
pride  in  accomplishing  a  mission — "'cause  with  a  trunk 
full  o'  money  there's  no  excuse." 

Here  was  news.  Was  she  a  miser,  then  ?  The  very 
thought  was  enough  to  make  one  spin  with  excitement,  and 
the  growing  belief  that  it  was  so  kept  Val  "going,"  so  to 
speak,  for  many  a  cheerful  week. 

There  came  a  day  when,  after  taking  oaths  of  the  most 
binding  and  blasphemous  character,  Julia  Otway  was  let 
into  the  "'famcrly  secret." 

She  was  obviously  disappointed  that  all  this  preparation 
led  up  to  so  little. 

146 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  Why,  every  human  bein'  in  Noo  Plymouth  knows  your 
gran'ma's  a  miser.  My  father  says  she  was  awf ul  cute,  sell- 
in'  out  her  negroes  in  the  nick  o'  time,  and  she  came  here 
with  heaps  o'  money ;  but  she  don't  trust  much  of  it  to  the 
bank,  and  she  lives  so  close  and  never  spends  a  cent,  so  o' 
course  she's  got  a  hoard  som'ers." 

Val  was  not  pleased  at  the  tone  of  this  corroboration. 
The  joy  of  having  a  real  live  miser  in  the  "famerly"  was 
clouded.  She  determined  not  to  let  her  father  be  the  only 
inhabitant  of  the  town  who  was  still  in  the  dark  on  a  sub 
ject  touching  his  comfort  so  closely.  The  next  time  they 
were  alone  together  she  told  him  how  much  he  was  de 
ceived  as  to  the  "  famerly's  "  finances. 

He  laughed  till  the  tears  came  into  his  eyes,  and  he  fell 
to  coughing,  and  then  his  mother  appeared  with  the  inevi 
table  bottle  of  tolu,  capsicum  and  paregoric,  and  com 
pelled  him,  between  his  paroxysms  of  amusement  and 
choking,  to  swallow  an  extra  large  dose. 

When  he  told  her  the  news,  she  laughed  too,  but  a  trifle 
grimly,  and  turned  on  Val  with  : 

"  I  am  surprised  to  hear  that  you  discuss  family  affairs 
with  the  neighbors.  It's  not  a  Gano  habit." 

And  she  went  back  to  her  own  room  without  vouchsafing 
the  smallest  defence  or  explanation.  But  Val's  father  took 
her  in  his  lap,  and  told  her  a  long  consoling  story,  begin 
ning,  "  In  the  year  18 — "  This  communication,  bristling, 
as  usual,  with  dates,  was  to  the  effect  that  the  "hidden 
hoard  "  was  composed  of  worthless  Confederate  notes,  and 
it  was  just  because  they  had  that  trunk  full  of  money  that 
they  were  poor. 

Nobody  ever  heard  of  a  bill  going  unpaid  or  having  to  be 
presented  twice  at  Mrs.  Gano's  door ;  but  Val  was  very  con 
scious  as  time  went  on  that  her  "frocks,"  as  her  grand 
mother  called  dresses,  were  old  and  ugly  and  out  of  fashion. 
They  had  been  lengthened,  and  turned,  and  dyed,  and  when 
they  simply  refused  to  hold  together  any  longer,  instead  of 
getting  a  new  one  like  Julia  Otway's,  as  she  had  dreamed,  Val 
had  the  humiliation  year  by  year  of  wearing  her  way,  moth- 

147 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

like,  through  her  aunt  Valeria's  entire  antiquated  ward 
robe.  There  were  all  kinds  of  objections  to  drawing  on 
this  family  reserve.  The  things  in  themselves,  to  Val's 
eyes,  were  hideous,  hideous  —  bareges  unpleasant  to  the 
touch  and  sight,  ugly  reps,  ancient  bayadere  silks  and 
flowered  organdies  that  tore  if  you  looked  at  them  hard  ; 
and  the  inhabitants  of  New  Plymouth  looked  at  them  very 
hard  indeed,  and  sometimes  rubbed  their  eyes.  Then,  as 
if  their  being  so  out  of  fashion  were  not  cross  enough, 
these  fabrics  were  fabulously  precious  to  her  grandmother's 
heart,  and  had  to  be  worn,  so  to  speak,  with  fasting  and 
prayer.  Woe  to  Val  if  she  spilt  milk,  or  dropped  maple 
syrup,  on  Aunt  Valeria's  things,  for  these  objectionable 
garments  never  to  the  bitter  end  became  Val's  own.  The 
dead  woman  seemed  to  stretch  a  hand  out  of  the  grave  to 
keep  her  hold  on  them,  never  for  a  moment  remitting  her 
claim.  Spoiling  your  own  pretty  blue  sash,  that  your 
mother  had  bought  in  New  York,  was  naughty,  but  hurt 
ing  anything  of  Aunt  Valeria's  was  a  crime  of  darker  hue. 
Each  time  a  new  garment  was  required,  Mrs.  Gano,  with 
set  face  and  faltering  hands,  would  open  Aunt  Valeria's 
trunk,  and,  with  the  air  of  one  dealing  out  purple  and  fine 
linen,  or  like  a  monarch  conferring  orders  of  the  Garter  and 
the  Cross,  she  would  say  to  the  dark-browed  child  : 

"  There  !  you  shall  have  that !" 

And  Val  would  perforce  disguise  as  well  as  she  could  her 
loathing  of  the  gift. 

The  child's  passionate  hatred  of  the  ugly  and  uncouth 
was  an  unending  pain  to  her.  She  would  shut  her  eyes 
tight  as  she  passed  old  Mr.  Thompson,  with  his  great  wen, 
conscious  of  the  same  sensation  of  sickness  that  would 
come  over  her  at  the  malodorous  neighborhood  of  a  dead 
cat.  She  would  jerk  her  head  away  in  the  street  as  if  she 
had  been  struck  when  she  met  the  idiot  boy  ''Jake,"  more 
shaken  and  afraid  than  if  she  had  seen  a  ghost.  She  would 
grit  her  teeth  morning  after  morning  with  unabated  rage 
and  detestation  as  she  put  on  a  certain  green  poplin  of 
Aunt  Valeria's,  with  its  pattern  of  yellow  ochre  palms. 

148 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

There  was  something  about  the  sad  and  faded  green  of  this 
frock,  something  about  the  fat  and  filthy-colored  palms, 
that  made  the  wearer  long  to  smash  everything  within 
her  reach.  Some  of  VaFs  wildest  misdeeds  could  have 
been  traced  to  that  green  poplin.  AVhile  the  abhorred 
garment  held  together,  even  her  pretty,  slim  bronze 
boots  were  powerless  to  cheer  a  heart  so  deep  bowed 
down. 

Emmie's  clothes  seemed  never  to  wear  out ;  it  was  parfc 
of  her  almost  invariable  advantage  over  Val.  Mrs.  Gano 
more  than  once  pointed  out  that  Val  succeeded  in  working 
her  toes  through  three  pairs  of  boots  while  Emmie  was 
carefully  wearing  one. 

"  Emmie  isn't  the  captain  at  prisoner's  base,"  the  accused 
would  say,  in  self-defence,  "and  she  doesn't  walk  miles  and 
miles  with  father  on  Sunday  afternoons." 

Val  was  very  proud  of  these  same  walks,  even  if  the  con 
versation  did  usually  begin  with  : 

"Now  that  you  are  learning  history,  no  doubt  you  can 
tell  me  what  was  happening  in  Paris  273  years  ago  to-day  ?" 
or,  "This  is  the  anniversary  of  a  battle  that  settled  the 
fate  of  an  empire;  of  course  you  remember,"  etc.;  or  that 
less  easily  eluded  form:  "Whose  birthday  is  this?"  And 
while  the  child,  innocent  of  a  notion,  seemed  to  be  diving 
down  into  profound  deeps  of  information  after  the  required 
fragment,  he  would  help  her  on  with  a  hint — "  One  of  the 
real  benefactors  of  the  race  ;  did  more  for  the  good  of  hu 
manity  by  his  discovery  than  all  the  saints  in  the  calendar. 
I  recollect  speaking  of  him  just  a  year  ago,  later  in  the  day 
than  this,  about  five  o'clock,  as  we  stood  with  Professor 
Black  by  the  pyrus  japonica." 

"  Oh  yes,"  Val  would  cry  out  with  delight  at  having  a 
"glimmer,"  though  not  of  what  he  asked  ;  "I  remember 
perfectly,  and  I  asked  you  if  the  pyrus  was  the  kind  of 
burning  bush  Moses  saw." 

"JSfcaetly." 

And  the  best  feeling  prevailed,  it  not  occurring  to  John 
Gano  that  even  now  his  daughter  had  not  the  dimmest 

149 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

notion  who  the  great  man  was  who  thus  unseasonably  in 
truded  on  their  Sunday  tete-d-tete. 

She  was  very  sensitive  to  his  disapproval,  and  suffered 
acutely  when  he  showed  how  he  despised  a  person  who  for 
got  the  difference  between  a  sycamore  and  a  balsam  poplar. 

"  What's  the  use  of  your  having  eyes  if  you  don't  use 
them  ?" 

And  she  silently  determined  to  be  more  observant,  and 
win  back  her  father's  respect. 

"  You  should  greet  these  good  friends  by  name  when  you 
walk  abroad,"  he  would  say.  '•  You  wouldn't  pass  a  wom 
an  every  day  in  the  street,  as  beautiful  as  that  silver  birch, 
or  a  man  as  magnificent  as  the  Otways'  copper  beech,  without 
asking  his  name  ;  and  you  wouldn't  be  content  with  know 
ing  his  intimates  called  him  'John/  '  What  family  does  he 
belong  to  ?'  you'd  say.  '  What  is  his  history?'  Now,  here 
have  I  taken  the  pains  to  introduce  you  to  these  desirable 
acquaintances,  and  yet  you — " 

"  I  shall  know  'em  next  time,"  she  would  protest,  humbly. 

By-und-by  her  father  didn't  need  to  interrupt  the  main 
thread  of  his  discourse  more  than  to  pause  with  pointed 
walking-stick  for  a  second,  while  his  little  companion  would 
interpolate  briskly  :  "  Ulmus  Americana,"  or  "  Tilia."  And 
if,  instead  of  his  instantly  resuming  story  or  homily,  he 
still  stood  pointing,  she  would  proceed  :  "  Also  commonly 
called  bass,  lime,  or  linden  ;  bark  used  for  matting  and 
ropes  ;  wood  for  sounding-boards  ;  sap  for  sugar,  and  its 
charcoal  for  gunpowder." 

lie  would  nod  and  walk  on,  finishing  his  broken  sentence 
as  though  nothing  had  intervened  between  subject  and  pred 
icate.  Although  he  was  severe  with  her  constitutional 
forgetfuluess  of  dates,  her  father,  at  least,  did  not  obtrude 
upon  her  the  disgrace  of  extreme  youth.  He  talked  the 
gravest  matters  to  her  with  an  air  of  conferring  with  an 
equal.  They  discussed  religion  with  no  little  openness, 
and,  by  dint  of  diligent  inquiry,  she  heard,  amazed,  the  ex 
tent  of  his  unbelief.  He  had  at  first  meant  to  be  reticent, 
but  as  she  got  older  and  yet  more  inquiring,  he  had  said  : 

150 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  One  thing,  at  least,  a  child  has  a  right  to  expect  from 
its  parents,  and  that  is  truth.  I  am  bound,,  as  I  see  the 
matter,  to  give  my  child  as  faithful  an  account  of  the 
world  as  I  am  able.  I  am  the  traveller  coming  home,  of 
whom  the  young  one  setting  forth  asks  the  way.  Shall  I 
advise  him  to  go  in  the  wrong  direction  because  the  old 
sign-posts  misled  me  9"  He  would  shake  his  head  gloomily, 
and  go  on  as  if  communing  with  his  own  soul :  "Not  con 
sciously  to  mislead,  that  is  the  basic  human  obligation." 
Then  he  would  look  down  on  a  sudden  at  the  little  school 
girl  trotting  solemnly  along  by  his  side,  and  resume  with  a 
kind  of  severity:  "I  don't  owe  my  child  money" — he 
used  to  revert  to  this  as  if  it  were  a  sore  point — "  I  don't 
owe  my  child  worldly  position  or  honors,  or  houses  or 
lands,  but  I  owe  him  honesty.  I  shall  never  consciously 
deceive  him." 

And  so  Sunday  by  Sunday  she  heard  the  Gospel  preached 
at  St.  Thomas's  in  the  morning,  and  in  the  later  day  the 
new  tidings  of  science,  and  a  sort  of  sublimated  socialism, 
preached  among  the  lanes  and  hills.  She  heard  the  story 
of  the  making  of  the  world  (not  according  to  Genesis),  and 
was  invited  to  observe  in  "Nature's  Workshop,"  as  her 
father  called  the  hills,  how  the  making  and  transforming 
still  went  on. 

"  In  these  high  places,"  he  would  say,  with  enthusiasm, 
"you  may  detect  Nature  in  the  very  act." 

Val  was  shown  how  busy  the  little  brooks  were,  and  the 
wide  river  as  well,  ever  making  "sedimentary  deposits," 
still  carving  out  its  channel,  wearing  clown  the  fire-born 
rock  as  surely  as  the  chalk  cliffs  in  its  "ancient  ineradi 
cable  inclination  to  the  sea." 

She  saw  for  herself  how  the  wind  and  the  weather 
worked  away  day  and  night  disintegrating,  tearing  down, 
until  even  to  a  child  it  was  clear  that  one  day  the  proud 
upstanding  hills  would.be  brought  low,  and  lay  their  heads 
in  the  plain.  There  was  a  tragic  element  in  the  story  and 
its  ocular  proof.  It  made  the  solid  earth  waver  under  the 
feet  as  in  an  earthquake.  Her  father  had  pointed  out  how 

151 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

even  the  old  Fort  that  had  so  stoutly  withstood  the  fierce 
Red  Man  could  not  hold  out  against  this  subtler  foe. 
He  had  shown  her  where  even  the  great  corner-stones 
were  exfoliating;  with  his  finger-tip  lie  could  flake  off  the 
loosened  bits,  but  regretfully,  and  only  as  an  object-lesson. 
No  child  must  lift  a  finger  to  help  this  insidious  enemy; 
and  yet,  rightly  comprehended,  Nature  and  Nature's  laws 
were  our  best  friends,  Val  was  given  to  understand.  It 
was  the  theologian  who  had  spoiled  man's  legitimate  satis 
faction  in  the  world.  Christianity  had  been  the  greatest 
curse  of  Time  (this  came  as  a  lightning-flash)  ;  Christi 
anity  had  killed  art,  discouraged  learning,  and  set  back 
the  clock  of  Progress  2000  years ;  had  turned  man's 
thoughts  and  energies  from  the  righteous  task  of  making 
a  heaven  on  earth ;  had  filled  him  with  foreboding,  and 
forbidden  him  natural  joys. 

John  Gano  had  no  need  to  tell  his  daughter  not  to  con 
vey  to  her  grandmother  any  inkling  of  this  indictment  of 
the  holy  faith.  It  was  a  thrilling  secret.  To  be  a  sharer 
in  it  was  a  proud  distinction  which  led  to  Val's  being  per 
mitted  to  remain  in  the  room  when  Professor  Black,  a  con 
tributor  to  her  father's  favorite  periodical,  the  Popular 
Science  Monthly,  came  on  flying  visits,  and  they  sat  and 
talked  of  these  real  dark  ages  of  the  world  —  Pliocene, 
Eocene,  and  the  rest. 

Mrs.  Gano  did  not  shrink  from  reading  Darwin,  and 
Spencer,  and  other  books  her  son  left  about.  As  time  went 
on  she  came  to  entertain  the  clearest  views  as  to  science 
being  the  handmaid  of  religion.  In  these  later  days  of  her 
own  development,  she  had  no  quarrel  with  those  ••  orthodox 
scientists,"  who  regarded  the  Mosaic  story  with  respect 
as  "symbolical" — symbolical  of  what  was  not  inquired. 
The  vaster  age  of  the  world,  the  true  story  of  the  rocks, 
gave  Mrs.  Gano  only  a  fresh  and  more  passionate  sense  of 
the  wonder  and  majesty  of  the  ways  of  God.  She  corrobo 
rated  and  supported  her  new  friends  among  modern  his 
torians  and  men  of  science  as  vehemently  as  of  old  she 
had  upheld  a  favorite  preacher,  poet,  or  Biblical  com  1111-11- 

152 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

tator.  She  objected  vigorously  to  much  she  found  in 
Buckle  and  Lecky,  and  to  certain  Germans  whose  names 
she  disdained  to  utter,  and  bestowed  her  unqualified  ap 
proval  upon  some  of  the  lesser  lights  whose  Theism  was 
sound. 

After  Professor  Black  was  gone,  or  that  other  wise  man 
from  the  East,  the  handsome  and  distinguished -looking 
editor  of  the  Engineering  and  Mining  Journal,  Mrs.  Gano 
would  agitate  the  great  red  rocking-chair  into  an  abortive 
rock,  and  lifting  her  chin  with  an  air  of  disdain  :  "Humph  \" 
she  would  say,  "a  mighty  superior  person  !"  Then,  seeing 
her  son  would  not  respond  to  this  obvious  irony :  "Who  is 
he,  to  quarrel  with  the  Bridgewater  Treatises  !" 

"Black  is  too  accurate  a  thinker  to  accept  the  theory  of 
design  carried  to  the  highest  perfection."  And,  hoping  to 
stem  the  tide  of  further  objurgation  of  his  friend,  he  would 
demolish  the  Treatise  on  the  Human  Eye.  "So  far  from 
its  being  the  nicest  adaptation  of  means  to  an  end,  the  eye 
of  man  is  a  clumsy  and  pitiful  production." 

This  was  the  kind  of  irreligion  that  in  these  days  ex 
cited  Mrs.  Gano's  ire  more  than  any  other.  So  hot  would 
the  argument  grow,  that  sometimes  her  son  would  utterly 
lose  sight  of  his  determination  never  to  disturb  his  mother's 
faith.  He  would  turn  upon  her  with  all  the  enthusiasm  of 
the  passionate  amateur. 

(t  One  glance  through  the  magnifying-glass  at  the  infi 
nitely  superior  eye  of  the  common  house-fly  is  enough  to — 

"  Enough  to  make  any  Christian  thankful,  I  should  say, 
that  his  eyes  are  what  Providence  made  them." 

"The  fly's  eye  is  a  far  finer  instrument." 

"  Humph !  A  pretty  sight  we'd  be  with  protruding 
goggles  bigger  than  all  the  rest  of  the  face  !" 

"I  assure  you  the  fly  has  a  beautiful  eye  I  And  then  the 
way  it  is  placed  !  Magnificent !  A  group  of  powerful 
lenses  mounted  on  rods,  controlled  by  delicate  muscles  that 
turn  the  eye  about  so  that  without  moving  his  body  he  can 
see  all  round  him.  There  was  an  invention  if  you  like  !" 

"I  shouldn't  have  liked  it  in  the  least." 

153 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"Ah,  that's  because  you  don't  realize  that  to  examine 
certain  insects  through  the  magnifying-glass  is  to  dispose 
at  once  and  forever  of  the  notion  than  an  omnipotent 
Providence  did  His  level  best  by  man.  As  a  mechanical 
contrivance  the  human  eye  is  merely  an  intricate  failure." 
Then,  perhaps  perceiving  that  these  intricate  failures  in 
his  mother's  head  were  shooting  lightnings,  he  would  shield 
his  audacities  behind  a  foreign  authority.  "Ilelmholtz 
says  he  would  be  ashamed  of  any  novice  in  his  laboratory 
who  should  design  so  poor  an  optical  appliance." 

"Just  like  his  German  impudence  !  A  nation  of  boors 
and  atheists !" 

John  Gano  would  always  end  by  pulling  himself  up,  and 
accepting  these  strictures  on  his  authorities  and  his  friends 
(and  by  implication  on  himself)  with  a  silent  tolerance. 

Val  felt  a  fine  superiority  in  thinking  that  she  under 
stood.  The  grandmother,  who  was  such  an  autocrat,  and 
thought  so  highly  of  her  own  judgment,  was  in  reality 
very  bigoted  and  lamentably  behind  the  age.  But  Val 
and  her  father  bore  with  her,  not  even  exchanging  covert 
glances  when,  with  shining  eyes  and  sibylline  aspect,  she 
would  burst  into  Old  Testament  denunciation  and  proph 
ecy.  Her  father  was  really  a  miracle  of  forbearance.  His 
behavior  to  his  mother,  in  spite  of  her  shortcomings,  was 
beautiful.  He  would  sit  and  read  Kuskin  aloud  to  her  by 
the  hour,  and  would  give  her  his  arm  of  an  evening  and 
slowly  pace  the  gravel  paths,  instead  of  going  any  more 
interesting  and  inspiring  tramps  with  his  brisker  compan 
ion  along  river  or  over  hill. 

On  the  occasions  when  Val  tagged  after  the  pair,  she  was 
firmly  convinced  that  the  tone  of  her  grandmother's  con 
versation  was  adjusted  to  young  ears.  It  made  her  long 
to  shout  out:  "Oh,  he  tells  me  a  great  deal  more  than 
ever  lie  tells  you  !" 

Mrs.  Gano  would  sometimes  interrupt  her  son  with  scant 
ceremony  and  say,  glancing  back  at  the  child  :  "Great  is 
the  mystery  of  godliness.  There  is  a  point  at  which  the 
finite  mind  must  stop,"  and  so  on. 

154 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

Val's  contempt  for  this  was  profound  ;  she  felt  it  was 
not  in  alignment  with  what  they  had  been  saying  before 
she  came  up  with  them.  She  would  slip  her  hand  into 
her  father's,  and  squeeze  it  gently,  to  restore  the  sense  of 
secret  understanding.  They  would  often,  when  she  was 
there,  talk  about  the  stars,  perhaps  as  being  "  safe  ground/' 
if  one  may  so  speak  of  the  plains  of  heaven. 

Did  John  Gano  say,  dreamily,  "The  Polar  star  is  dim 
to-night,"  she  would  as  likely  as  not  answer  with  signifi 
cance  :  "  Is  it  dim,  or  our  eyes  ?" 

"No  fault  of  our  eyes  this  time,  for  we  can  see  Mars 
well  enough.  He's  in  a  warlike  mood  to-night,  naming 
angrily." 

Mrs.  Gano  would  pause,  and  half  to  herself  repeat : 

"'The  heavens  declare  the  glory  of  God,  and  the  firma 
ment  showeth  His  handiwork/ ' 

"  Can  you  find  the  Scorpion,  little  girl  ?"  her  father 
would  say. 

And  if  she  wasn't  quick  with  eye  and  answer,  her  grand 
mother  would  stop,  lifting  her  shawled  arm  with  curious 
unmodern  largeness  of  movement,  and  point  the  constella 
tion  out,  half  chanting  : 

"  '  By  His  Spirit  He  hath  garnished  the  heavens;  His 
hand  hath  formed  the  crooked  serpent/' 

As  if  gently  to  divert  her  attention,  the  son  would  per 
haps  face  about,  and,  walking  slowly  back  with  her  to  the 
house,  would  do  a  little  quoting  on  his  own  account : 

"'Many  a  night  from  yonder  ivied  casement,  ere  I  went  to  rest, 
Did  I  look  on  great  Orion  sloping  slowly  to  the  West/ 

All !  the  music — the  sheer  mu?ic  in  that  man  I" 

"  There  was  music  before  his  day.  And  Tennyson  is  one 
of  them  that  hath  ears  to  hear,  as  well  as  tongue  to  speak. 
Small  doubt  but  from  his  ivied  casement  in  the  West  he 
heard  the  voice  of  the  Lord  from  out  the  chambers  of 
the  South.  'Canst  thou  bind  the  secret  influences  of 
Pleiades,  or  loose  the  bands  of  Orion  ?  Canst  thou  bring 

155 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

forth  Mazzaroth  in  his  season  ?  Or  canst  thou  guide  Arc- 
turus  with  his  suns  ?'" 

"I  can  see  Cassiopeia,"  Val  would  observe,  just  to  show 
that  she  was  not  quite  out  of  it. 

And  she  would  grasp  her  fathers  hand  tighter,  to  re 
mind  him  of  their  agreement  that  the  straggling  W  stood 
for  "We" — Val  and  her  father.  Then  he  would  find 
Lyra  and  the  Little  Bear,  and  tell  how  the  Milky  Way, 
instead  of  being,  as  Hiawatha  and  Val  had  thought,  "path 
way  of  the  ghosts  and  shadows,"  was  really  star-dust,  the 
scattered  nebula}  of  other  suns  and  systems. 

Mrs.  Gano  would  look  back  before  going  in-doors,  and 
say,  with  solemn  upward  gaze  : 

"  Yes,  yes  !    '  An  undevout  astronomer  is  mad/" 

Then  they  would  go  in  silently  to  bed. 


CHAPTER  XII 

A  LETTER  by  the  late  post  from  cousin  Ethan  !  It  would 
be  the  last  before  he  himself  would  appear.  Emmie 
watched,  with  luminous  eyes,  her  grandmother's  opening 
of  the  envelope.  Val,  in  banishment,  waited  impatiently 
outside  in  the  dusk  on  the  stairs  to  hear  the  news  ;  but  the 
face  of  the  reader  in  the  long  room  darkened  as  she  read. 
She  dropped  the  letter  in  her  lap  at  the  close,  speechless. 

"  Oh  !  what  is  it,  gran'ma  ?"  quivered  the  sympathetic 
Emmie. 

The  old  lady  merely  turned  away  her  head. 

"Gran'ma,  he  isn't  dead?" 

"No,  not  exactly  dead,"  she  said,  very  low. 

"  He  is  very  ill  ?" 

"  No.     He  is  gone  again  to  Erance." 

"  But  I  thought  he  was  coming  here  for  sure  this  time  ?" 

"  So  did  I ;  not  so  Aaron  Tallmadge  !" 

The  name  swept  out  like  a  sudden  gust,  scattering  to 
the  winds  her  unnatural  calm. 

''But  you  said  he  was  nearly  of  age,  when  he  would  be 
his  own  master." 

"Aaron  Tallmadge  remembered  that."  Her  lips  trem 
bled  with  anger,  and  the  big  chair  seemed  to  share  her  agi 
tation.  She  held  on  to  the  red  padded  arms,  as  though  she 
rocked  on  the  high  seas  in  a  gale.  "  When  Ethan  comes  of 
age  he'll  be  five  thousand  miles  away." 

"But  can't  you  stop  him  ?     Let  Venie  take  a  telegwaf." 

"No,  no!"  The  high  wind,  in  which  the  great  chair 
rocked,  died  down,  the  angry  animation  faded  out  of  the 
old  face,  leaving  it  older  still  and  very  weary.  "No,  no  ; 
these  things  are  not  to  be  forced.  It's  natural.  He  has 

157 


THE    Ol'KN    QUESTION 

been  with  Aaron  Tallmadge  all  his  days  ;  he  is  his  heir. 
He  lives  in  a  world  where  men  think  much  of  the  hond  of 
money,  and  little  of  the  hond  of  blood.  I  shall  not  write, 
again." 

She  folded  up  the  letter  and  put  it  in  its  envelope.  Her 
head  drooped  over  the  task. 

"  I  thought  cousin  Ethan  loved  being  here  ?" 

"A  long  time  ago.     lie  was  very  little." 

"But  he  never  forgot  ?" 

"It  used  to  seem  so." 

Lower  the  old  head  sank,  till  the  folds  of  white  veil,  fall 
ing  on  either  side,  met  like  two  drawn  curtains  across  her 
face. 

"  But  you  could  see  in  his  letters  he  was  terribly  sad  and 
sorry  to  have  put  off  coming — just  to  please  his  grand 
father." 

"Ah,  well!  it  was  a  long  time  ago,  and  he  was  very 
little." 

Mrs.  Gano  lifted  her  head — and,  behold,  her  face  was 
wet  with  tears.  She  found  her  pocket-handkerchief,  and 
wiped  them  away  angrily,  as  if  she  resented  the  salt-water 
drops  more  than  her  grandson's  defection. 

"Natural  enough,  I  suppose,"  she  said,  with  an  assump 
tion  of  half-scornful  indifference.  "  Ethan's  a  man  now, 
with  wide  means  and  the  world  before  him.  Why  should 
he  come  to  this  dull,  smoky  town,  when  he  can  '  improve 
his  accent '  under  brighter  skies  ?  There's  no  fortune 
here  for  him  to  inherit,  and  nothing  new  for  him  to 
see." 

"lie  hasn't  ever  seen  me,"  said  Emmie,  "nor  Val." 

Her  grandmother  drew  her  close  and  held  the  beautiful 
little  face  in  her  hands,  looking  down  with  unaccustomed 
tenderness,  while  again  the  tears  gathered.  A  sudden 
movement  of  "This  will  never  do."  She  cleared  her  voice 
and  rose  hurriedly. 

"Good-night,  child  ;  go  to  bed.  I  must  tell  your  father 
we  needn't  look  for  Ethan  after  this." 

Emmie  kept  on  going  to  bed  at  half- past  eight,  even 

158 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

when  she  was  old  enough  to  have  struck  for  another  hour's 
freedom.  But  Emmie  had  not  so  much  to  get  into  her 
day ;  in  fact,  she  was  constantly  going  about  saying  she  had 
nothing  to  do,  and  begging  her  giandmother  to  find  her 
some  way  of  getting  through  the  hours.  This  frame  of 
mind  was,  like  godliness,  one  of  the  mysteries  to  Val.  How 
anybody  found  the  day  long  enough,  and  what  being 
" bored  "  meant,  were  matters  equally  impenetrable.  Her 
father  was  right.  The  world  was  a  beautiful  and  absorbing 
place  to  one  whose  pleasure  in  it  was  un jaundiced.  Val 
reflected  with  pride  that  her  capacity  for  enjoyment  was 
not  blighted  by  too  great  early  piety.  It  was  no  doubt  be 
cause  she  was  so  singularly  enlightened  and  advanced  that, 
to  her,  just  "being  alive,  was  so  rapturous  a  joy.  There  was 
Emmie,  now.  With  all  her  advantages,  she  wasn't  happy; 
and  she  was  as  religious  as  her  grandmother,  if  not  more 
so.  The  inference  was  plain.  People  who  were  worried 
about  their  souls  could  not  be  expected  to  relish  the  selfish 
joy  of  being  first  in  the  games  at  recess.  They  probably 
didn't  even  eat  their  meals  with  the  immense  relish  of  the 
unregenerate.  They  didn't  feel  their  hearts  swell  up  with 
unaccountable  gladness,  at  mere  waking  in  the  morning,  to 
receive  a  broadside  from  the  sun  straight  between  the  eyes. 
But  it  was  just  the  same  if  the  wind  blew,  or  the  rain  fell. 
For  no  discoverable  reason  beyond  lack  of  piety,  Val  would 
feel  herself  filled  from  crown  to  toe  with  tingling  delight 
at  this  mere  "being  alive."  There  were,  alas  !  other  times 
when,  for  reasons  partly  patent,  partly  obscure,  she  was  sore 
oppressed;  but  never  did  any  hour  find  her  so  bowed  down 
that  the  wild  tumult  of  a  storm  would  not  stimulate  her 
like  strong  wine.  She  would  run  about  the  house  with  fly 
ing  hair  and  wide,  excited  eyes,  when  she  couldn't  manage 
to  escape  out-doors,  and  feel  the  rapturous  buffet  of  the 
winds  and  dash  of  the  rain  in  her  face. 

"  She  is  like  an  electrical  eel  when  there's  a  thunder- 
gust,"  she  once  overheard  her  grandmother  say. 

"  Some  affinity  between  the  child  and  the  elements,"  her 
father  had  replied,  half  seriously.  ''She  came  into  the 

159 


THK    OPEN    QUESTION 

world  during  the  wildest  and  most  destructive  storm  that 
ever  swept  over  the  State." 

After  hearing  that,  Val  felt  no  apology  was  needed  for 
her  desire  to  go  out  and  romp  with  the  winds.  It  was  all 
very  well  for  other  people  to  shut  doors  and  windows  and 
sit  in  the  middle  of  non-conducting  feather-beds  (as  her 
mother  had  done),  but  how  should  Val  be  airaid  of  thunder 
and  lightning  ?  They  had  come  forth  in  their  splendor 
and  their  might  to  welcome  her  into  the  wonderful  world. 
Dangerous  to  others  ?  Oh,  very  likely.  They  were  friends 
and  allies  of  Val  Gano. 

But  not  only  through  these  more  or  less  usual  avenues 
did  gladness  reach  her,  but  through  some  of  the  thorny 
by-ways  before  which  men  had  set  up  the  warning  signal, 
"Pain!" 

There  was  that  affair  of  the  hornet's  sting.  How  lustily 
she  had  howled  when,  stepping  into  the  ash-gray  nest  down 
by  the  choke-pear-tree,  she  found  herself  surrounded  by  an 
army  of  angry  enemies,  darting  little  poisoned  knives  ! 
How  frantically  she  had  run  back  to  the  house,  rending  the 
air  with  shrieks,  and  yet  queerly  conscious,  after  the  first 
shock  of  surprise,  that  this  was  a  curious  experience  and  a 
great  discovery,  not  alone  of  the  power  of  hornets,  but  a 
discovery,  too,  of  the  power  of  pain  in  herself  !  Before  she 
reached  the  house,  and  leaving  a  lusty  yell  only  half  finish 
ed  in  her  throat,  she  had  stopped  to  notice,  with  an  excite 
ment  akin  to  pride,  how  the  back  of  her  hand  and  arm  had 
puffed  up  to  an  enormous  size,  and  was  stinging  still,  as  if  a 
thousand  knives  were  being  turned  about  in  the  flesh. 
Here  was  something  quite  new.  While  it  agonized  her,  it 
kept  her  sense  of  curiosity  in  a  tumult  of  painful  pleasure. 
She  stood  still,  watching  the  hand  swell,  while  the  tears 
poured  down  her  flushed  cheeks,  absorbed  in  noting  the 
action  of  the  poison,  wondering  how  much  more  the  un 
canny  power  of  the  sting  could  swell  her  poor  little  distort 
ed  hand.  Was  there  any  pain  more  horrible  than  this  ? 
Was  it  possible  human  beings  could  endure  anything  worse  ? 
And  if  so,  what  ?  She  shut  her  wet  eyes,  dizzy  with  suffer- 

160 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

ing,  and  yet  in  the  dim  background  of  her  mind  almost 
avid  of  that  intenser  pang,  if  any  such  there  were  in  the 
arsenal  of  Nature's  weapons  against  man. 

Later  came  the  memorable  attack  of  diphtheritic  sore 
throat,  that  made  them  all  so  kind.  That  was  one  of  the  most 
diverting  things  that  had  ever  happened  to  her,  not  mere 
ly  because  her  father  sat  by  her  nearly  all  the  time,,  when 
her  grandmother  was  or  wasn't  there  ;  not  only  because  her 
unwary  elders  fell  into  discussions  that,  no  matter  where 
else  they  led,  could  not  terminate  in  Val's  being  ejected 
from  the  room,  just  as  they  got  to  the  interesting  crisis; 
not  because  of  the  thrilling  tales  of  her  grandmother's  old 
acquaintance,  Betsy  Patterson,  of  Baltima',  her  marriage 
with  Jerome  Bonaparte,  and  her  journey,  alone  and  friend 
less,  half  across  the  world,  to  meet  her  mortal  enemy  and 
brother-in-law,  the  great  Napoleon.  Not  in  these  obvious 
delights  alone  lay  the  whole  advantage  of  the  diphtheria 
incident,  but  in  the  discovery  that  there  was  a  sensation, 
in  or  under  the  actual  pain  itself,  that  was  new,  exciting, 
almost  agreeable.  It  was  touching  experience  at  a  fresh 
point,  and  was  far  from  being  altogether  regrettable.  This 
sharp  pain  when  one  tried  to  swallow  was  only  a  keener 
way  of  feeling  alive,  a  new  accomplishment  of  the  alert,  re 
sponsive  body.  As  if  with  foreknowledge  that  her  experi 
ence  in  this  direction  was  going  to  be  limited,  or  as  though 
she  had  heard  Sir  Thomas  Brown  say,  "  There  is  some  sapor 
in  all  ailments,"  Val  showed  every  inclination  to  make  the 
most  of  this  one. 

"Now,  you've  got  to  behave,  Emmie,"  she  would  say,  if 
her  sister  seemed  likely  to  forget  that  here  at  last  her  cus 
tomary  privileges  must  for  the  nonce  give  way.  "  You've 
only  got  a  weak  chest,  but  I've  got  a  diphtheritic  throat !" 

It  was  during  the  agreeable  time  of  convalescence  that  her  _ 
grandmother  showed  her  the  faded  samplers  that  she  and 
her  sisters  and  Aunt  Valeria  had  worked  as  children.  She 
got  out  the  little  boxes  of  old  trinkets,  too,  and  told  the 
"story "of  each  and  every  one.  There  were  volumes  in 
these  simple  rings  and  mourning  brooches,  watch-chains 

L  101 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

of  hair,  badly-painted  miniatures,  enamelled  hearts  and 
charms.  She  seemed  to  have  literally  dozens  of  gold  and 
silver  pencils.  One  was  to  be  Val's  and  one  Emmie's,  when 
they  were  "old  enough  to  take  great  care  of  them."  But 
all  the  best  ones  seemed  to  belong  to  cousin  Ethan.  And 
there  was  that  priceless  and  magnificent  possession  (that 
was  also  to  be  Ethan's),  Grandfather  Culvert's  gold  snuff 
box,  presented  by  the  Burns  Club,  of  "  Baltima'.''  and  in 
scribed  with  a  verse  of  good-fellowship.  This  was  the 
ancestor  that  Val  took  most  interest  in,  even  before  the  rev 
elation  of  the  snuffbox.  He  had  been  a  merry  gentleman, 
who  amused  himself  so  well  in  the  " Baltima''"  of  his  day. 
that  he  had  to  be  sent  when  only  nineteen  as  "supercargo," 
whatever  that  meant,  to  the  West  Indies.  It  was  evident 
paternal  punishments  in  those  times  were  slight,  for  he  had 
loved  "supercargoing."  He  came  home  with  a  store  of 
stories  and  a  fortune,  and — as  it  presently  leaked  out,  to 
Val's  and  Emmie's  delight  —  he  ran  away  with  his  wife 
when  he  was  only  twenty-one  and  the  little  lady  barely  fif 
teen.  Mrs.  Gano  had  been  betrayed  into  admitting  that 
she  was  born  before  her  mother  had  reached  her  sixteenth 
birthday. 

"Why,  then,  our  great -grandmother  had  a  daughter 
when  she  was  fifteen  !" 

"  No,  no  ;  she  was  very  nearly  sixteen — one  may  say 
she  was  sixteen." 

But  Val  and  Emmie  preferred  the  other  form.  A  baby 
of  your  own  to  play  with  when  you  are  only  fifteen  !  Ha, 
that  was  the  way  to  begin  life  !  People  in  these  times 
shilly-shallied  so  wastefully.  This  great -grandmother 
hadn't  missed  anything  by  her  promptitude  in  marrying. 
After  she  was  a  wife  and  a  mother,  she  used  to  call  her  girl 
friends  into  the  high-walled  garden,  and  stationing  a  slave 
on  the  gate-post,  to  keep  watch  and  give  warning  when  the 
husband  could  be  seen  coming  home  from  his  counting- 
house,  this  real,  proper  kind  of  a  great-grandmother  would 
tuck  up  her  long  skirts  and  have  a  rousing  game  of  hide- 
and-seek,  stopping  breathless  in  the  middle  when  Sambo 


THE    OTEN    QUESTION 

cried  from  his  watch-tower,  "  Massa  comin'  !"  She  would 
let  down  her  gown  and  pin  up  her  curls  and  go  demurely 
to  the  gate  to  meet  her  lord,  and  tell  him  the  baby  and  she 
had  had  a  good  day.  Ah,  it  was  plain  they  had  been  a 
frivolous  pair  !  Theirs  were  the  mahogany  tables  with 
slender,  twisted  legs  and  baize-lined  folding  tops,  that  in 
these  serious  days  never  caught  sight  of  a  card.  Instead 
of  reading  Blair's  "Sermons"  and  Baxter's  "Rest,"  this 
agreeable  ancestor  had  accumulated  all  those  French  ro 
mances  down-stairs,  and  even  when  he  left  gay  youth  be 
hind,  he  had  sat  in  his  counting-house,  not  like  the  King 
of  Hearts,  counting  out  his  money,  but  revelling  in  the 
novels  of  the  Wizard  of  the  North.  And  when  it  was 
noised  about  at  home  among  his  growing  daughters  that  he 
had  nearly  finished  the  latest  one,  and  would  bring  it  back 
that  evening,  the  three  girls  would  start  fair  and  even  from 
the  bottom  step,  at  his  coming-  home  hour,  and  race  to 
meet  him.  The  lucky  one  who  reached  him  first  got  the 
new  Waverley. 

To  the  adaptable  eye  of  youth  "all  things  are  possible," 
with  parents  as  with  God.  It  never  occurred  to  Val  and 
Emmie  as  a  subject  for  surprise  or  inquiry  how  such  a  per 
son  as  their  grandmother  had  come  to  find  herself  dans 
cette  galere.  Mrs.  Gauo  would  usually  wind  up  her  Calvert 
stories  with  a  half-humorous,  half-reverent  smile. 

"Your  great  -  grandmother "  —  she  never  said  "my 
father"  or  "mother,"  but  with  a  detached,  impartial  air 
— "your  great -grandmother  was  the  best  woman  I  ever 
knew  ;  and  your  great-grandfather  lived  a  useful  life,  and 
died,  after  receiving  extreme  unction,  in  all  the  odor  of 
sanctity." 

"'He  wasn't  a  Pisspocalian,  like  us  ?"  Emmie  asked. 

"  No  ;  Roman  Catholic.  We  had  all  gone  different  ways 
by  that  time,  but  he  would  say,  '  Ah!  wait  till  you're  as  old  as 
I  :  you'll  all  come  back  into  the  bosom  of  Mother  Church.'  '' 
She  would  smile  at  this.  "He  was  not  a  thinker — he  had 
lived  all  his  best  years  in  the  active  world  of  work  and 
pleasure,  and  when  he  saw  his  end  in  sight,  he  looked  about 

163 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

him  for  a  priest/'  She  would  smile  again — less  tenderly, 
more  ironically.  "  This  was  priests'  business ;  best  leave 
it  in  their  hands." 

It  was  interesting  to  the  children  to  observe  that  not 
even  for  the  benefit  of  the  young  was  family  history  falsified. 

"  Oh,  he  was  consistent  enough.  Even  before  he  em 
braced  lloman  Catholicism,  he  never  spoke  of  religion  ex 
cept  with  the  greatest  reverence."  She  would  glance 
sharply  at  the  children's  father,  if  he  were  present  when 
she  reached  this  point  in  that  or  any  similar  narrative, 
seeming  for  the  moment  to  lose  sight  of  the  younger  gen 
eration  in  her  desire  to  point  the  moral  for  the  benefit  of 
her  son.  "I  never  heard  of  a  Culvert  who  questioned  re 
vealed  religion  ;  and  as  for  the  Ganos,  any  one  who  has  a 
mind  to  look,  may  read  in  the  family  record  that  they  were 
all  eminent  for  piety  in  their  day  and  generation." 

"  Does  that  little  record  go  further  back  than  17GO  ?"  her 
son  once  asked,  meditatively. 

"  No  :  but  that's  quite  far  enough  to  show  what's  ex 
pected." 

During  this  illness  in  particular,  there  were  times  when 
Val  was  drawn  unaccountably  to  the  strange  old  woman. 
If  the  child  had  had  more  encouragement,  she  could 
have  loved  her  well  and  openly,  renouncing  for  her  sake 
domestic  heresy  and  schism.  The  secret  passion  for  loving 
and  being  loved  had  grown  in  the  girl  with  every  year.  It 
was  not  only  the  strongest  current  that  swept  through  her 
being — that  is  true  of  many — but  even  in  this  young  and 
sheltered  life  it  rose  betimes  to  freshet  and  to  flood,  hun 
gry,  devouring,  unappeased.  The  girl  led  three  lives — the 
gay,  triumphant  surface  one  at  school,  the  checkered  ex 
istence  at  home,  and  that  deep  heart  life  apart  in  the  sun 
lit  valley  of  imagination,  whither,  when  the  wind  of  destiny 
blew  bleak  on  the  uplands  of  domestic  life,  she  would  re 
treat  with  all  the  honors  of  war — rally  and  "  captain  her 
army  of  shining  and  generous  dreams." 

The  intensity  of  the  craving  for  approbation,  the  love- 
hunger  in  the  child's  heart,  would  be  called  morbid  by 

164 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

those  who  find  that  epithet  a  ready  one  to  apply  to  heights 
and  depths  from  which  they  themselves  are  debarred  by  a 
niggard  nature.  It  was  true  (even  if,  like  many  another 
fact  about  this  young  creature,  it  is  not  to  be  approved) 
that  she  had  had  an  affair  of  the  heart  in  New  York- 
princes  apart — when  she  had  attained  the  ripe  age  of  seven. 
It  had  been  a  kind  of  infidelity  to  the  dark-browed  hero  of 
dream,  for  the  gentleman  in  question  was  not  a  nobleman, 
not  even  a  Nimrod,  and  he  had  red  hair.  But,  neverthe 
less,  he  was  a  peril  to  the  peace  of  mind  of  a  diminutive 
maid,  and  all  unconsciously  to  himself  "brought  her  ac 
quainted  with"  a  more  thrilling  joy  and  a  more  poignant 
pain  than  some  women  can  look  back  upon  from  the  height 
of  fifty  years.  Oh,  these  strange  stirrings  of  the  too  eager 
heart  ! — the  sharp  rapture  and  the  sharper  pain,  the  whim 
sical,  bitter  pathos  of  them  read  by  the  light  of  later  "ex 
ultations,  agonies  !"  Who  that  has  had  this  window  opened 
for  him  into  the  virginal  chamber  of  awakening  woman- 
life  can  look  through  it  without  tears  ?  But  this  particu 
lar  window  is  not  for  our  eyes.  After  that  premature  ro 
mance  had  come  to  an  untimely  end,  or,  rather,  when  its 
hopelessness  was  comforted  and  covered  by  the  quick-grow 
ing  ivy  of  new  affections,  there  was  peace  for  a  time  in  the 
camp  of  love,  or  only  border  skirmishing.  Not,  of  course, 
for  any  lack  of  enterprise,  or  any  dearth  of  heroes,  for  al 
most  any  passer  in  the  street  will  serve  for  a  peg  to  drape 
the  gossamer  of  a  dream  upon.  He  is  perhaps  the  unre 
quited  lover — he  is  some  one  in  disguise  ;  not  Mr.  Ernest 
llalliwell,  the  son  of  the  local  doctor,  but  heir  to  an  earl 
dom  over  the  sea.  You  are  sorry  you  can  never  love  him  ; 
he  must  break  his  heart  in  vain.  It  is  almost  too  sad,  for 
his  hair  curls  prettily  over  his  ears,  and  his  smile  is  gentle 
and  haunting.  But  high  above  all  these  little  "  foot-notes," 
as  it  were,  to  the  great  main  text  of  the  romance,  ran  the 
radiant  "continued  story  "of  that  one  who  cometh — he 
with  swift,  unfaltering  feet,  he  with  the  sheltering  arms- 
bearing  the  great  gift  in  his  bosom,  and  his  face,  still  for  a 
little  space — still  hidden. 

165 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

Meanwhile,  eager  friendships  at  school,  and  devotion  to 
her  father  at  home,  and  to  Jerry's  handsome  brother  in  the 
promised  land  beyond  the  osage  hedge — not  all  these  and 
hope  besides  could  fill  the  foolish,  hungry  heart.  Nobody 
else  in  the  world  but  a  few  novel-writers  and  herself  seemed 
in  the  least  concerned  about  the  chief  business  of  life,  which 
was  plainly  loving  and  being  loved.  It  did  not  appear  to 
be  a  subject  of  conversation  with  grown  persons.  Not  only 
at  the  Fort,  with  a  grandmother  who  plainly  could  know 
nothing  of  such  matters,  and  a  father  who,  besides  his  chil 
dren,  loved  only  rocks  and  trees,  but  in  the  homes  of  the 
other  girls  as  well,  the  supreme  topic  was  neglected,  ig 
nored,  except  when  considered  covertly  among  the  young, 
as  conspirators  whisper  treason.  It  was  very  queer.  Evi 
dently  her  absorption  in  the  subject  was  part  and  parcel  of 
her  perverted  nature,  her  'Mow  curiosity."  It  was,  at  all 
events,  a  weakness  to  be  hid  except  from  that  very  best  of 
all  her  "best  friends/7  Julia  Otway.  Not  that  Julia  even 
was  told  of  the  Great  Romance,  but  the  two  girls  wondered 
and  surmised  together,  bringing  day  by  day  to  their  com 
mon  store  every  new  scrap  of  knowledge  or  conjecture  that 
came  their  way.  Val  was  the  more  adventurous,  the  less 
fastidious.  She  it  was  who  would  speculate  most  boldly, 
sketching  out  certain  chapters,  certain  scenes  even,  in  that 
great  coining  drama,  that  are  currently  supposed  not  to  en 
ter  the  imagining  of  maidens.  Yes,  yes  ;  it  was  all  wrong 
perhaps  to  think  about  these  tilings ;  but  why,  then,  were 
they  so  interesting  ?  It  wasn't  her  fault.  But  at  last 
one  day,  when  the  more  modest- minded  Julia  said,  "I 
want  awfully  to  hear,  but  1  don't  think  we'll  tell  these 
stories  any  more.  I  don't  feel  somehow  as  if  it  was  quite 
right,"  then  Val  knew  that  indeed  she  was  "low-minded," 
and  was  as  humiliated  as  the  sternest  moralist  could 
desire. 

She  admired  Julia  more  than  ever  for  her  rigid  asceticism. 
Ah  yes  !  there  was  no  blinking  the  fact.  That  was  the 
kind  cf  strength  of  mind  it  was  tine  to  have,  but  the  richly 
merited  rebuke  of  herself  made  her  wince  with  shame. 

160 


T1IE    OPEN    QUESTION 

The  very  memory  of  the  moment  was  like  a  dagger-thrust 
for  years. 

And  still  there  was  a  buoyancy  in  her  that  was  always 
lifting  her  mountains  high  after  these  deep  descents  into 
the  pit.  One  potent  device  for  the  recovery  of  self-respect 
was  to  name  a  day  from  the  dawn  of  which  she  should  start 
a  new  life,  absolutely  different  from  the  past, 'which  was  by 
this  act  cut  off  and  dropped  into  oblivion.  Monday  morn 
ings  began  not  alone  a  new  week,  but  a  new  era.  Her  great 
fresh  start  of  the  year  was  taken  annually  at  Christmas,  or 
if  one  made  a  slip — one  always  did — the  New  Year  was  the 
time,  or  else  Easter,  or,  after  all,  one's  birthday  was  a 
fitting  moment  for  such  regeneration.  The  girl  who  had 
been  only  eleven  was  inevitably  a  poor  creature,  but  the 
person  of  twelve !  Ah,  when  the  clock  struck  that  com 
plete  and  significant  number  a  new  and  quite  perfect  exist 
ence  was  inaugurated  !  The  next  year,  to  be  about  to 
enter  one's  teens,  was  discovered  to  be,  after  all,  the  psy 
chological  moment  for  starting  a  new  life.  Then  four 
teen  !  Ah,  that  was  the  true  age  of  understanding,  be 
sides  being  twice  the  sacred  number  seven  !  If  she  was 
much  happier  than  other  people  for  the  most  part — as  she 
knew  she  was — she  had  also  moments  of  being  much  near 
er  despair.  There  were  all  the  times  when  people  hurt 
her  feelings,  and  when  her  only  consolation  was  the  old 
one  of  pretending  she  hadn't  any  feelings  to  hurt.  If  life 
ministered  to  her  more  than  it  did  to  most,  it  bruised  her 
too  from  crown  to  sole. 

There  were  those  hours  of  reaction,  after  long  expecta 
tion  of  some  birthday  -  party,  or  the  Fourth  of  July  fire 
works,  or  the  school  Commencement,  when  a  blank  wretch 
edness  fell  upon  her.  It  hadn't  been  what  she  had  hoped. 
How  or  where  it  had  failed  was  partly  a  mystery,  but  there 
was  a  strange  bitterness  left  behind.  She  refused  ve 
hemently  in  her  own  mind  to  accept  for  truth  the  rumor 
abroad  in  the  world,  "Nothing  ever  comes  up  to  expecta 
tion."  Oh  yes,  things  would  by-and-by  come  up  to  and  ex 
ceed  anticipation.  It  was  only  now,  and  through  some 

167 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

fault  in  her,  that  they  fell  short  of  perfection.  As  she 
grew  older  she  developed  a  pitiless  self-criticism — of  her 
speech,  her  manners,  her  looks,  her  attainments.  This 
creature,  among  certain  girls  that  were  awkward,  and  cer 
tain  others  that  put  on  airs  and  graces,  this  profoundly 
egotistical  little  person,  was  actually  commended  for  being 
"perfectly  un-self  conscious  ";  the  fact  being  that  she  was 
far  too  "aware "of  herself,  saw  herself  far  too  vividly  in 
her  mind's  eye,  to  go  on  making  the  current  mistakes  of 
affectation  or  of  clumsiness.  She  knew  unerringly  when 
she  giggled  with  embarrassment,  when  she  had  been  "  mak 
ing  eyes,"  when  she  was  in  danger  of  seeming  superior,  or 
what  her  grandmother  called  "  toploftical."  She  was 
keenly,  quiveringly  self-conscious,  and  conscious  too  of 
other  people  ;  feeling  their  moods  as  an  /Eolian  harp  feels 
the  light  wind,  brightening  under  their  unspoken,  their 
merely  looked  approval,  and  shrinking  beneath  her  careless 
exterior  at  their  untittered  blame,  wearing  her  reputation 
for  hardness  like  an  inversion  of  the  magic  suit  of  mail, 
seeming  stout  armor,  and  yet  letting  every  arrow  through. 
Still,  it  served  its  purpose,  since  no  one  dared  say,  "See  ! 
that  struck  home  !" 


CHAPTER  XIII 

AFTER  several  years'  supremacy  as  "the  greatest  dancer 
on  the  earth/'  that  brilliant  career  was  suddenly  aban 
doned.  It  was  evident  that  a  mistake  had  been  made. 
Val's  true  destiny  was  to  be  Queen  of  Song.  It  was  diffi 
cult  to  illustrate  the  fact  in  your  unmusical  grandmother's 
house,  but  you  could  do  a  good  deal  in  that  direction  at 
the  New  Plymouth  Seminary  for  Young  Ladies.  You 
could  roar  down  several  hundred  girls  in  the  morning 
hymn,  and  you  could  even  have  occasional  surreptitious 
performances  in  the  gynasium,  or  at  home  in  the  kitchen, 
where  whole  cycles  of  impromptu  operas  were  given  in  a 
season.  For  the  rest,  you  sang  to  yourself  in  lonely  places 
and  exulted.  Sometimes  you  trembled,  shaken  to  the 
verge  of  tears  by  the  beauty  and  pathos  of  your  own 
voice. 

There  had  been  a  brief  interval  when  the  sum  of  achieve 
ments  in  the  drawing-class  seemed,  in  Val's  mind,  to  point 
to  her  becoming  a  second  Rosa  Bonheur.  It  was  certain 
that  her  copy  of  Landseer's  "Rabbits"  was  a  work  of  ex 
treme  merit.  Even  her  grandmother,  who  usually  said 
"Hum!"  when  she  looked  at  Val's  original  designs  for 
wall-paper  or  carpet,  remarked  on  beholding  the  rabbits : 
"Til  have  them  framed." 

If  that  were  not  distinction,  where  shall  it  be  found  ? 

But  it  was  grasping  to  set  more  than  one  snare  for  great 
ness — let  Emmie  be  Rosa  Bonheur,  Val  would  be  the  great 
singer  of  her  time. 

"Let  me  have  music  lessons/'  she  prayed.  "Til  prac 
tise  at  school  and  at  Julia's/' 

"  It  is  out  of  the  question,"  said  her  grandmother. 

109 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

Mrs.  Gano  folded  her  bine-veined  hands  across  the  open 
book  on  her  knee. 

"  Well,  I  think  they  mean  to  expel  me." 

"  Expel  you  !" 

She  shut  the  book  with  a  snap. 

"Oh,  Miss  Appleby's  coming  to  see  you,"  said  Val,  with 
overacted  indifference.  "She'll  tell  you  everything  that 
Emmie  hasn't  told  you  already/' 

"  I  don't  choose  to  ask  Miss  Appleby  for  details  that  I 
ought  to  hear  from  you." 

Val  looked  at  Emmie's  curiosity -lighted  face  and  kept 
silence.  Her  grandmother  understood. 

"Run  out  and  play,  child;  you  sit  too  much  in  the 
house, "she  said  to  the  younger  child. 

"  I've  got  nobody  to  play  with,"  came  from  Emmie,  not 
budging. 

"  Then  go  and  get  me  some  jonquils  and  narcissuses." 

"  I've  hurt  my  finger." 

"  Then  take  a  book  and  sit  in  the  porch." 

"  I've  read  all  the  books  on  the  juvenile  shelf." 

"  Leave  the  room  !" 

VaFs  heart  swelled  up  in  gratitude.  It  was  considerate 
of  her  judge  not  to  hold  the  court  of  inquiry  before  Em 
mie. 

"  Well,"  said  Val,  plunging  into  the  unhappy  business 
the  moment  the  door  was  closed,  "you  know  how  we  hate 
and  despise — I  mean  how  we  don't  like  Miss  Beach." 

"  Humph  !  I  dare  say  Miss  Beach  doesn't  like  all  her 
pupils." 

"  I  should  think  she  didn't !    She  hates  us  !" 

"  I  don't  want  to  hear  such  strong  expressions.  I've 
nothing  to  do  with  the  other  girls  ;  but  it's  a  bad  lookout 
for  you  if  you  haven't  earned  the  respect  of  an  estimable 
woman  like  Miss  Beach." 

"  You  wouldn't  call  her  that  if  she  gave  you  unfair 
marks,  and  said  and  looked  spiteful  things  at  you." 

"  Looked  !    What  nonsense  are  you  talking  ?" 

"  Well,  she  " — Val  dropped  her  eyes  and  crimsoned— 

172 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  she  laughed  at  my  new  gymnastic  dress."     There  was  a 
pause.     "  It  is  unlike  the  others." 

"  Beyond  a  doubt.  Far  too  good  for  the  purpose.  That 
broche  came  from  Baltima'.  Your  aunt  Valeria  never 
wore  it  but  once.  It  was  as  good  as  new." 

"  Well,  all  the  other  girls  wear  blue  serge,  but  they  never 
laughed.  Miss  Beach  did.  Perhaps  she  didn't  mean  me 
to  see,  but  I  did." 

-Humph!    Well?" 

"  Well,  she  invents  new  marches — in-and-out  figures,  you 
know  —  and  she  only  does  them  once  very  quickly,  and 
makes  me  lead  off  afterwards,  and  blames  me  if  there's  the 
least  mistake.  So  I — I — just  thought  the  next  time  she 
invented  something  new  I'd  see  if  I — I — couldn't  make  her 
do  it  slower.  So — well,  I  collected  parlor-matches  for  a 
week." 

Mrs.  Gano's  quick  movement  said,  "  That's  where  the 
matches  have  gone." 

"  And  I  cut  off  their  heads,  and  I  gave  some  to — three 
of  my  friends,  and  I  had  a  lot  myself  ;  and  as  we  marched 
we  threw  'em  little  by  little  under  Miss  Beach's  ugly  fat — 
I  mean  under  her  feet." 

"  I'm  amazed  at  you — simply  amazed  !" 

Mrs.  Gano's  eyebrows  had  shot  up  to  the  middle  of  her 
forehead.  Val  studied  for  the  hundredth  time  the  hair 
less  bony  arches  above  the  piercing  eyes,  and  the  strange 
look  of  the  patches  of  eyebrow  sitting  up  on  her  forehead 
in  that  amazed  fashion. 

"  Well,  she  did  do  that  new  march  very  slow,  stopping 
and  looking  round  surprised  when  the  matches  exploded, 
and  at  last  she  gave  up  marching  altogether,  and  kind  of 
exploded  herself.  She  was  angry,  and  red  too — purple,  all 
over  her  ugly  podgy — over  her  face." 

"  I  don't  wonder  she  blushed  for  you.  I  am  very  much 
ashamed  of  you  myself.  It  was  the  action  of  a  ruffianly 
street-boy." 

' '  She  wasn't  ashamed.  She  was  just  mad — I  mean  angry. 
She  asked  who  had  done  it,  and  nobody  said — " 

173 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

Val  knew  "out  of  the  question"  meant  it  was  a  question 
of  being  out  of  pocket. 

"  I'll  give  up  drawing/' 

"  Drawing  is  much  less  expensive  ;  and  even  so,  you  and 
Emmie  must  give  it  up  after  this  term." 

"  Then,  what  on  earth  are  we  going  to  learn  besides 
common  lessons  ?" 

"  I'll  teach  you  botany  and  gardening,"  said  her  father. 

"I  don't  care  about  botany,"  said  Val,  hotly,  "and" — 
unmasking  the  hypocrisy  of  years — "  and  as  for  gardening, 
there  isn't  am/tiling  I  hate  so  much." 

"  What  r 

Her  father  couldn't  believe  his  ears. 

"  Yes.  I'm  sorry.  It's  very  kind  of  you  to  offer  so  often 
to  teach  me  ;  but  I  really  quite  hate  flowers." 

Her  father  looked  at  her  with  a  severity  she  hud  seldom 
seen  in  his  face. 

"Then,  in  that  case" — he  spoke  as  though  originating 
a  punishment  fit  for  a  new  unnatural  crime — "  in  that  case 
you  should  learn  cooking." 

After  such  a  blow,  there  was  nothing  for  it  but  to  remem 
ber  that  for  weeks  Jerusha  had  wanted  her  to  take  some 
household  sewing  to  poor  old  Miss  Kirby  up  on  Plymouth 
Hill.  Val  would  run  all  the  way  to  the  Dug  Road  and 
there,  in  the  deep  cut  in  the  hill-side,  or  in  the  even  more 
lonely  ravine  above,  she  would  sit  with  the  bundle  of  sew 
ing  on  her  knees,  raging  solemnly  over  it  at  fate,  and  de 
vising  spirited  revenges.  In  a  wood  on  the  farther  side 
there  was  a  place  deep  hidden  in  bush  and  brier,  where  a 
wild  grape-vine  made  a  swing  between  two  old  forest  trees. 
It  was  a  distinct  source  of  comfort  to  Val  that  she  didn't 
know  the  names  of  these  trees.  She  would  shut  her  eyes 
tight,  and  swing  high  out  in  the  free  air,  with  a  sense  that 
she  was  flying  from  two  calling  voices,  afraid  the  accents 
should  reach  her  clearly,  afraid  lest  by  an  unwary  peep 
something  in  bark  or  leaf  should  press  back  upon  her  im 
patient  memory  "their  ugly  names,  "cheered  and  strength 
ened  after  each  escape  by  finding  her  ignorance  intact. 

170  v 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

Out,  far  out,  on  the  wild  grape-vine,  swinging  till  she 
forgot  the  importunate  trees,  forgot  all  threatened  igno 
miny,  forgot  everything  but  the  ecstasy  of  living  and  swing 
ing  and  singing,  and  looking  forward — looking  out  past 
home  perplexities  and  wild  wood  tangles,  out,  far  out, 
towards  the  secure  beauty  and  the  certain  wonder  of  the 
coming  years. 

Emmie  came  home  from  school  earlier  than  usual  one 
memorable  day,  and  told  Mrs.  Gano  with  frightened  eyes 
that  Val  had  done  something  awful.  She  couldn't  make 
out  what,  for  all  the  Academic  and  Collegiate  girls  whis 
pered  about  it  secretly  at  recess.  But  Val  was  locked  up 
in  the  Principal's  room,  and  it  was  considered  doubtful  if 
she'd  ever  be  let  out,  so  angry  was  Miss  Appleby.  But  even 
the  Principal's  wrath  was  less  than  the  wrath  of  her  niece, 
Miss  Beach,  the  new  teacher  of  the  primary  school  and  of 
gymnastics. 

Emmie  had  naturally  felt  humiliated  at  her  sister's  dis 
grace.  She  thought  she  could  never,  never  go  back  to 
school  again.  By  the  time  the  miscreant  got  home,  Mrs. 
Gano  was  properly  worked  up  to  receive  her. 

Val  saw  at  a  glance  from  Emmie's  cloudy  eyes  and  her 
grandmother's,  cold  and  gleaming,  how  her  story  had  been 
forestalled.  She  held  up  her  head,  and  said,  carelessly  : 

"  Well,  I've  got  myself  into  a  scrape." 

Her  grandmother  fixed  her  silently  for  an  instant,  and 
then  said  : 

"  '  Scrape '  is  not  the  word.  You've  heard  that  ex 
pression  from  Jerningham  Otway.  We  don't  get  into 
scrapes." 

Emmie  seemed  to  Val's  overheated  imagination  to  sit 
and  plume  herself. 

"All  the  members  of  your  family  have  been  well-man 
nered  and  well-conducted  people.  We  leave  '  scrapes '  to 
others." 

Val  fell  a  sudden  prey  to  the  old  loneliness  in  the  midst 
of  so  much  family  rectitude. 

"  I  am  waiting  to  hear  what  has  happened." 

171 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  I'm  not  surprised  you  wanted  to  hide  it." 

"  Then  she  said  she  should  get  her  aunt  to  suspend  the 
whole  class ;  so  I  had  to  tell  her  it  was  me,  and  they  shut 
me  up  in  Miss  Appleby's  room." 

"Quite  right,"  said  Mrs.  Gano,  backing  up  the  authori 
ties  as  usual. 

"Oh  yes,"  said  Val,  bitterly,  "that's  what  Miss  Beach 
thought  too;  she  said  it  was  the  only  thing  to  do  with  a 
wild  beast." 

"  She  didn't  use  those  words  !" 

The  eyebrows  suddenly  shot  up  again. 

"  Yes'm,  she  did.  Ask  Julia  Otway.  Miss  Beach  'd 
say  anything.  Why,  she  was  educated  at  a  mixed  school." 

"  You  don't  mean  blacks  and  whites  together  ?" 

"  Yes'm— Oberlin." 

Mrs.  Gano  had  some  ado  to  recover  her  rigid  attitude  of 
respect  for  those  in  authority  over  her  grandchild  ;  but 
she  relaxed  the  upward  tension  of  her  eyebrows  and  was 
studying  Val  straight  through  her  spectacles. 

'•'  You  can  learn  manners  at  home.  Miss  Beach  is  quite 
competent  to  teach  Emmie  spelling  and  you  dancing  and 
calisthenics,  and  her  manners  are  not  your  business.  It 
is  only  the  young  people  who  are  quite  perfect  themselves 
who  can  waste  time  criticising  their  elders." 

"  Yes'm,"  answered  Val,  meekly.  She  was  surprised 
that  her  crowning  misdeed  and  public  disgrace  were  taken 
so  calmly  "Please,  who's  going  to  tell  my  father  I'm 
expelled  ?" 

"  Nobody  is  to  tell  him  anything  of  the  sort !"  she  fired 
up.  •'  Now  that  things  have  come  to  this  pass  I  must  try 
to  make  you  understand.  We  can't  go  on  like  this.  What 
you  have  done  to-day  would  disgrace  a  street  urchin  ;  and 
yet  you  are  old  enough  to  be  a  comfort  to  your  father." 

Val  fidgeted  miserably. 

"  You  have  given  us  more  trouble  than  all  the  other 
children  of  the  family  put  together  ;  and  yet  1  have  dis 
covered  there  is  a  kind  of  reasonableness  in  you  when  it's 
deliberately  appealed  to." 

174 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

Val  looked  up  quickly.  She  felt  there  was  a  new  note 
in  these  remarks. 

"  I  should  be  very  sorry  to  go  to  your  father  with  this 
miserable  story  ;  he  has  enough  to  trouble  him,  and  he  is 
ill  ;  he  does  not  get  better."  She  had  laid  convulsive  hold 
on  the  red-padded  arms  of  the  great  rocking-chair,  and  the 
purple  veins  started  up  on  the  long  hands.  "  I  sometimes 
think — I  sometimes  think  he  gets  worse/'  Her  voice  had 
sunk  very  low.  There  was  a  look  in  the  waxen  features 
that  made  the  girl's  heart  grow  chill.  "  I  have  noticed 
your  impulse  to  be  considerate  towards  your  father,  to 
spare  him  the  knowledge  of  your  antics.  I  have  been  glad 
you  had  this  instinct.  You  will  be  glad  when  you  are  older — 
when  you  are  alone/' 

There  was  a  long  silence.  Neither  looked  at  the  other. 
Presently,  with  lowered  eyes,  Val  came  closer,  and  on  a 
sudden  impulse,  kneeling,  she  laid  her  cheek  on  the  long 
left  hand  that  still  clutched  the  chair-arm. 

"  You'll  see/'  she  said,  fighting  down  her  tears — "  you'll 
see  I  shall  be  better." 

She  felt  the  other  hand  laid  softly  on  her  head,  and 
neither  of  the  two  spoke  or  moved  for  a  long  time. 

A  sharp  ring  broke  the  spell,  and  the  quick  following 
clatter  of  "  E.  Gano's"  knocker  sent  all  gentle  influences 
flying. 

'•'  Miss  Appleby  !"  Val  sprang  up.  Yes.  They  could 
hear  her  voice.  Before  Venus  had  time  to  come  and  say 
she  was  in  the  parlor,  Mrs.  Gano  had  opened  her  own  door 
and  closed  it  behind  her.  Val  stood  looking  out  of  the 
window,  trembling  with  anxiety,  registering  vows  that  if 
she  were  let  off  this  time,  if  by  some  miracle  she  were 
not  expelled,  she  would  be  such  an  honor  to  the  family, 
such  a  comfort  to  her  father,  that  he  would  be  encouraged 
to  live  practically  forever. 

Emmie  presently  opened  the  door  very  softly,  and  crept 
in. 

"  She's  just  goin',  I  think,"  whispered  the  little  sister, 
who  seldom  bore  a  grudge.  "  Oh,  she  has  been  getting  it !" 

175 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  Not  gran'ma  ?" 

Emmie  squirmed  with  suppressed  merriment  at  this 
notion. 

"  I  should  think  not !  Miss  Appleby's  been  getting  it. 
Gran'ma  said  they  were  making  a  mounting  out  of  a  mole 
hill — and  expelling  people  did  the  school  no  good.  Said 
you'd  tell  Miss  Beach  you  were  sorry,  and  that  was  a  good 
deal,  'cause  you  didn't  like  beggin'  pardings." 

"  Did  she  say  that  ?" 

"  Yes.  An'  Miss  Appleby  said  she  was  very  grieved,  but 
she  had  promised  her  niece  not  to  take  you  back  this  term." 

"Her  niece!  Her  sneaking  Black  and  White  Oberlin 
woer-r-r-rm  !" 

"  Gran'ma  didn't  call  her  that,"  whispered  Emmie,  with 
an  air  of  gentle  reproof.  "She  just  said,  'Unless  your 
niece  is  very  foolish'"  (Emmie  could  mimic  astonishingly 
well),  "'and  unfit  for  her  post,  she  will  be  glad  to  recon 
sider.'  Miss  Appleby  got  mad  at  that,  and  seemed  to  be 
going  away,  so  I  ran  into  the  dining-room.  When  I  got 
back  gran'ma  was  saying,  if  they  expelled  you,  I  should  be 
taken  away  too." 

"  Gracious  !'' 

"And  they  were  both  awful  mad  then,  an'  gran'ma  said. 
Oh,  she'd  just  as  soon  take  us  away,  and  she  wouldn't  hesi 
tate  to  say  why.  'We  don't  send  our  daughters  to  school 
to  be  called  wild  beasts  by  young  women  from  Oberlin.' " 

"  Hooray  !  hooray  !"  Val  spun  about  the  room,  waving 
her  arms  victoriously.  "  We've  got  a  oner  for  a  grand 
mother  after  all  !" 

The  room  door  opened  and  the  hall  door  banged. 

"  What  are  you  doing  ?"  said  Mrs.  Gano,  stopping  short. 

"Oh,  nothing,"  replied  Val,  composing  herself  expedi- 
tiously;  "only  I  do  love  you,  gran'ma,"  and  she  held  up 
her  face  to  be  kissed. 

"If  you  love  me,  keep  my  commandments,"  said  the 
lady,  without  enthusiasm,  and  equally  without  sense  of  ir 
reverence.  "That  will  do.  Now  go." 

She  was  turning  away,  when  some  sudden  thought 

176 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

occurred  to  her.     She  gleamed  at  Val  through  her  glasses 
in  an  enigmatic  way,  and  said  : 

"Is  this  true  about  the  trouble  you've  given  your  pre 
ceptors  over  the  Bible  verse  every  morning  ?" 

"  I  don't  give  trouble  every  morning  ;  but  it's  so  tire 
some,  gran'ma,  to  begin  exercises  every  day  the  same  way." 
"I  should  think  so,  if  several  hundred  girls  will  go  on 
repeating  exactly  the  same  texts  year  in  and  year  out/' 

"Well,  when  they  scolded  us  for  never  learning  new 
ones,  I  tried  to  oblige  them — I  did,  indeed." 

"Hum  !  Miss  Appleby  tells  me  you  appeared  next  day 
with  'Jesus  wept/'' 

Val  grinned,  and  then  grew  grave. 

"They  are  very  hard  to  please.  They  want  something 
we  hadn't  all  said  a  thousand  times,  and  something  longer 
than—" 

"  Naturally." 

"  You  can't  think  how  furious  they  are  now  if  we  happen 
on  the  same  thing.  I  do  my  best  to  oblige  them.  I  sup 
pose  a — Miss  Appleby — " 

Val  tried  to  find  out  from  the  non-committal  face  whether 
the  principal  had  entered  upon  this.  If  not,  so  much  con 
fessing  all  in  one  day  was  perhaps  overdoing  it. 

"Well,"  said  her  grandmother,  "Miss  Appleby  tells  me — 
I  can  hardly  credit  it — that  you  stood  up  in  your  place  yes 
terday  morning  and  recited,  '  Comfort  me  with  apples,  for 
I  am  sick  of  love."' 

"Well,  it  wasn't  me  that  laughed  ;  and  I  told  Miss  Ap 
pleby  it  was  in  the  Bible  right  enough." 

"  Yes.  Well,  Fll  pick  out  your  texts  for  you  in  future." 
She  spoke  with  charming  geniality,  and  a  glint  through  her 
glasses.  "Now  go  and  get  your  lessons  for  to-morrow." 

After  the  failure  of  Miss  Beach  to  have  Val  disgraced 
and  expelled,  the  girl  felt  that  though  her  grandmother 
might  herself  abuse  her,  she  would  not  permit  any  one  else 
to  do  so.  The  early  years  of  warfare  merged  by  degrees, 
and  in  spite  of  lapses,  into  a  less  lawless  scheme  of  life. 
The  reason  of  it  was  not  in  any  great  measure  regard  for 

177 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

her  father.  He  lived  too  much  apart  from  the  din  of  daily 
events  for  their  remote  effect  on  him  to  be  much  present  to 
the  preoccupied  mind  of  youth.  The  change  came  about 
through  a  growing,  albeit  unwilling,  admiration  and  sense 
of  friendship  for  her  grandmother.  She  was  entertaining, 
this  old  lady,  in  spite  of  her  terrible  faults.  One  was  never 
dull  with  her.  She  told  delightful  stories,  and  she  laughed 
at  yours  when  they  were  good.  Indeed,  no  matter  how 
abandoned  had  been  your  conduct,  if  you  could  make  her 
laugh  you  were  saved.  It  was  not  in  child-nature  not  to 
lay  traps  for  that  pardoning  gleam  of  the  fierce  eye,  that  in 
voluntary  twitching  of  the  judicial  mouth.  An  exchange 
of  anecdotes  tends  inevitably  to  a  good  understanding. 
But  more  than  by  any  other  means,  perhaps,  the  perverse 
school -girl  and  the  autocratic  old  woman  were  brought 
together  by  a  mutual  recognition  of  a  common  regard  for 
justice.  When  Val  found  out  that  her  grandmother  was 
not  as  arbitrary  as  she  had  supposed,  the  battle  was  half 
over.  Mrs.  Gano  had  been  overheard  advising  her  son, 
"  Don't  try  to  coerce  Val.  If  you  can  convince  that  child's 
reason  you  can  do  what  you  like  with  her,  but  you  can't 
drive  her  an  inch."  The  girl  felt  that  she  was  being  under 
stood.  Perhaps  the  truth  was  they  were  both  changing, 
both  developing,  the  old  no  less  than  the  young. 

Certain  it  is  they  became  better  and  better  friends,  and 
had  surprisingly  much  in  common.  Still,  Val  had  strug 
gled  so  long  against  owning  to  herself  that  any  good  could 
come  out  of  this  Nazareth,  that  it  was  some  time  before  a 
belated  sense  of  fairness  led  her  to  avow  guardedly  to  her 
old  fellow-sufferer  her  new  view  of  the  autocrat.  She  must 
try,  little  by  little,  to  convince  her  father  that,  contrary  to 
appearance,  and  despite  many  sore  experiences,  his  mother 
had  her  good  points. 

"  Gran'ma's  been  real  kind  to  me  and  Julia  to-day." 

"  lias  she  ?" 

"Julia  thinks  she's  awfully  nice." 

This  rather  in  the  tone  of  "  there's  no  accounting  for 
tastes." 

178 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"Yes,"  said  her  father,  not  seeming  enough  impressed. 

"She  says  I  may  read    The  H Family  and  all  the 

Frederika  Bremer  books  now  that  Fve  finished  the  Waver- 
leys." 

"  IFm  !     I  never  looked  at  them  myself." 

"  But  do  you  know  why  she  was  so  nice  about  The  H— 
Family?""  It  was  one  thing  to  do  justice  to  her  good 
deeds,  but  it  was  no  use  setting  up  a  false  ideal  and  pre 
tending  she  was  better  than  she  was.  "You  see,  we'd  read 
all  the  horrid  silly  little  Harry  and  Lucys  and  Sandford  and 
Mertons  and  Moral  Tales  and  things1,  and  I'd  begun  Bonn's 
Wilhelm  Meister." 

"  Oh,  ho  !" 

"  I  put  down  the  book  while  I  tied  my  shoe,  and  when  I 
looked  up  she  was  putting  it  into  the  fire." 

He  laughed. 

"  But  it  wasn't  her  book  at  all ;  I  got  it  out  of  your  room 
underneath  the  big  Brande  and  Taylor's  Chemistry.  It  had 
your  name  in  it." 

"Yes"— reflectively— "I  bought  it  on  April  9,  1870." 

"Well,  it's  burnt  now." 

He  was  still  smiling  and  stroking  his  ragged  beard. 

"  I  hope  she  isn't  going  to  keep  the  big  bookcases  locked 
up  forever,"  sighed  Val. 

"  She  will  never  like  to  see  Valeria's  books  knocking 
about." 

"Gracious,  no  !  She  refused  to  lend  Mrs.  Otway  Helen 
Whitman's  Poems,  because  she  said  it  had  Poe's  notes  in  it; 
but  /  knew  it  wasn't  a  bit  on  account  of  Poe.  It  had  some 
of  Aunt  Valeria's  notes  in  it,  arid  that  was  why  she  wouldn't 
let  it  go  out  o'  the  house.  I  was  awfully  ashamed,  and 
Mrs.  Otway  looked  so  snubbed." 

And  still  he  only  smiled. 

"  She  isn't  a  bit  like  other  people,  but  sometimes  I'm  not 
sorry." 

"  Never  be  sorry,  my  child.  Never  be  so  dull  as  not  to 
realize  that  the  woman  who  stands  at  the  head  of  our  line 
gives  us  our  best  title  to  honor — and  to  hope." 

179 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

Val  opened  astonished  eyes.  Her  father  was  indeed  for 
giving —  fantastically  generous.  He  was  gazing  off  into 
space  now,  and  his  look  was  strangely  lighted. 

"  She  belongs  to  the  heroic  age/'  he  said,  with  a  kind  of 
worship  in  his  face.  "  She  was  bom  before  we  began  to 
split  hairs,  and  have  nerves  instead  of  nerve." 

Val  couldn't  stand  it.  Her  father  was  worth  fifty  grand 
mothers. 

"  I  should  imagine  she  thought  she  was  a  pretty  fine  sort 
of  person." 

"  She  hasn't  a  notion  how  utterly  she  stands  alone.  I've 
gone  up  and  down  the  world  for  over  forty  years,  and  never 
seen  her  equal.  Her  equal?" 

lie  laughed  derisively,  and  began  to  talk  of  her  as  he 
might  have  talked  of  Semiramis  or  Boadicea,  only  more 
vividly.  It  was  very  annoying.  He  had  come  to  care 
about  her  too,  "only  more  so."  But  the  real  blow  fell 
when  it  came  out  that  he  had  felt  like  this  all  along.  Ap 
preciation,  fairness  were  all  very  well,  but  this  besotted 
heroine-worship  was  a  little  pitiable.  All  these  years  that 
Val  had  been  so  sure  he  was  silently  nursing  his  injuries 
and  modestly  contemplating  his  own  superiority,  he  had 
been  on  the  side  of  the  oppressor. 

'•'  H'm  !"  mused  Val.  "  I  s'pose  she  was  different,  then, 
to  her  oivn  children." 

"Ah  yes;  I've  often  observed  the  softening  of  late 
years." 

"The  what f" 

"  The  growing  tolerance,  the  forbearance  with  my  chil 
dren,  that  she  never  showed  Valeria  and  me." 

Val's  imagination  reeled  at  the  thought  of  what- her 
grandmother  could  have  been  like  when  she  was  more  in 
tolerant  than  she  was  to-day.  And  it  was  all  forgotten  and 
forgiven  !  Here  he  was  now  leaving  glittering  generalities, 
and  telling  story  after  story  of  his  mother's  courage  and 
her  wisdom.  She  did  seem  to  have  been  a  useful  kind  of 
parent,  and  it  appeared  she  had  been  more  generous  in 
money  matters  than  Val  had  thought. 

180 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  And  what  she  did  that  time  she  has  always  done.  She 
never  failed  anybody  who  depended  on  her.  I  always 
think  of  her  when  I  read  the  lines  : 

"  '  Oh  iron  nerve  to  true  occasion  true, 
.  .  .  that  tower  of  strength 
Which  stood  four-square  to  all  the  winds  that  blew  !' 

Try  to  understand  your  grandmother,  my  child,"  he  wound 
up  ;  "  she  is  the  Pallas  Athene  of  our  line." 

Val  did  not  know  that  an  American  is  never  so  happy  as 
when  he  is  vaunting  his  womenkind.  But  in  her  estima 
tion  Pallas  does  better  over  your  chamber  door  than  in  an 
arm  -  chair  looking  at  you — through  you — with  a  grand 
mother's  spectacles.  You  forget  what  a  heroine  she  is 
when  she  criticises  the  way  you  sit — "  A  lady  never  crosses 
her  legs  ;"  and  the  way  you  walk — "  I  used  to  swing  my 
arms  too — very  bad  habit ;  you  should  study  repose."  And 
when  wrought  upon  by  your  too  generous-judging  father, 
or  by  some  private  discovery  of  her  worth,  you  burst  out : 
"Oh,  I  do  love  you  !"  it  chills  you  to  get  for  all  response  : 
"You  don't  love  me,  or  you'd  behave  differently.  'By 
their  fruits  ye  shall  know  them/'' 

It  was  no  better  later  on,  when,  with  growing  freedom  of 
speech  and  warmth  of  feeling,  you  would  ask  in  an  engag 
ing  way  :  "  Why  don't  you  love  me  ?"  and  get  for  answer  : 
"  It's  a  mistake  to  think  your  relations  owe  you  love  ;  you 
have  to  earn  it  from  them  as  you  do  in  the  world  outside." 
Worst  of  all,  and  most  humiliating  to  the  eager  spirit,  was 
it  to  be  "  warded  off  "  if  you  came  to  kiss  her  of tener  than 
good -morning  and  good -night.  "We  are  not  a  kissing 
family,"  she  would  say  ;  and  you  cringed  under  the  blow. 

No  ;  Pallas  Athene  was  not  an  unqualified  success — as  a 
grandmother. 

There  were  times,  indeed,  when  her  shortcomings  near 
ly  drove  her  granddaughter  into  considering  an  elope 
ment  with  Harry  Wilbur,  the  eighteen -year- old  son  of 
Judge  Wilbur.  With  mental  apologies  to  her  ideal  hero, 
Val  had  kept  up  a  vigorous  correspondence  with  Harry, 

181 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

pending  the  time  when  the  superior  suitor  should  carry 
her  off,  and  save  her  the  trouble  and  ungraciousness  of 
breaking  the  pleasant  chains  that  bade  fair,  as  the  days 
went  on,  to  bind  her  to  her  gallant  young  Hercules.  Harry 
AVilbur  was  captain  of  the  base-ball  team,  and  the  darling 
hero  of  the  entire  New  Plymouth  Seminary.  Most  of 
these  studious  young  ladies  thought  more  of  manly  strength 
and  of  that  particular  grace  that  is  born  of  bodily  vigor 
than  they  did  of  the  qualities  of  the  mind.  It  was  as  if, 
all  untutored,  they  had  the  improvement  of  the  physique  of 
the  race  at  heart.  Julia  Otway,  for  instance,  would  des 
cant  almost  daily  upon  Harry  Wilbur's  ''splendid  figure," 
and  how  he  held  his  shoulders  ;  how  he  walked  from  the 
hip,  and  how  easily  he  played  the  hottest  game.  She 
would  give  as  adequate  reason  for  despising  some  more 
wealthy  or  more  intellectual  citizen,  that  she  hated  men 
who  did  uninteresting  things  for  a  living  or  did  nothing  at 
all.  Val  shared  this  spirit  of  Julia's  to  an  extent  that 
gave  her  a  pleasant  sense  of  victory  when  young  AVilbur 
showed  her  more  attention  at  dances  and  archery  tourna 
ments  than  he  showed  the  other  girls.  Besides,  this  open 
devotion  made  Ernest  Halliwell  sad,  and  Jerry  Otway 
"mad,"  and  that  was  highly  agreeable.  But  Harry  didn't 
"care  a  fip,"  as  Jcrusha  said,  about  music,  and  music  was 
the  supreme  affair  of  life  until — until— 

Every  year  saw  the  resources  of  the  Ganos  lessening,  the 
problem  of  life  more  difficult  to  solve. 

"You  see,"  Val  would  say,  radiant,  "it  just  shows  the 
need  for  me  to  study  singing  and  make  money." 

"You  ?  Ridiculous  and  most  improper  !  No  woman  of 
your  family  has  ever  dreamed  of  taking  money  for  any 
thing  she  has  done." 

The  following  summer — or  "on  June  18,"  as  he  would 
have  said,  taking  care  to  add  the  year,  and  even  the  hour — 
John  Gano  received  a  shock.  A  kindly  letter  had  come  to 
him  from  his  old  flame,  Mrs.  Otway,  to  say  that,  although 
he  seemed  to  have  forgotten  her,  still,  for  old  friendship's 

182 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

sake,  and  out  of  affection  for  Val,  she  felt  it  a  neighborly 
duty  to  tell  him  in  confidence  that  his  eldest  daughter  was 
making  preparations  to  run  away  and  be  a  chorus-girl  in. 
New  York.  Mrs.  Otway's  own  daughter  had  been  so  op 
pressed  by  the  enormity  of  the  secret,  that  she  had  told  her 
mother.  Julia  had  broken  open  her  bank  and  given  all  her 
savings  to  "the  cause."  It  was  understood,  too,  that  Val 
had  other  sources  of  revenue  not  revealed.  However, 
merely  to  deprive  her  of  the  money  might  not  be  sufficient 
to  head  her  off,  as  she  had  been  heard  to  say  she  was  going 
to  New  York,  if  she  had  to  walk  there. 

John  Gano  did  not  break  the  awful  news  to  his  mother. 
He  betrayed  nothing  unusual  in  his  aspect,  as  he  said  to 
his  daughter  : 

"  It's  a  glorious  afternoon  !     Shall  we  go  for  a  walk  ?" 

Val  was  not  as  enthusiastic  as  she  had  been  wont  to  be, 
but  after  the  fraction  of  a  moment's  preoccupied  hesitation 
she  answered,  brightly  : 

"  I  should  love  it  !" 

"  Come,  then." 

He  caught  up  his  blackthorn  stick,  and  they  set  off. 
Val  chatted  about  the  school  Commencement,  about  the 
new  archery  club,  and  how  "horrid  much"  the  bows  and 
arrows  cost. 

"  I  dare  say  I  could  make  you  a  set,"  said  her  father.  "  I 
always  made  my  own  cross-bows  as  a  boy." 

"I  know.  And  when  you  were  only  eight  you  cut  and 
carved  and  glued  together  a  perfect  model  of  a  stage-coach. 
You  are  wonderful  about  making  things ;  but  these  big  bows 
have  to  be  of  orange-wood,  tough  and  limber,  you  know." 

"'Hickory  would  do." 

"No;  they  have  to  be  all  alike.  That's  what  parents 
never  realize.  Gran'ma  was  just  so  about  my  gymnasium 
dress.  But  Jerry  Otway's  going  to  bring  a  piece  of  orange- 
wood  back.  He  traded  with  another  boy  at  the  Military 
Institute,  swopped  an  old  racket  for  it.  He's  going  to  see 
if  he  can't  do  a  home-made  bow,  so's  you  can't  tell  the  dif 
ference,  varnish  and  all." 

183 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  When  does  Jerry  get  back  ?" 

"A  week  from  to-morrow,  in  time  for  Julie's  birthday- 
party." 

They  had  gone  a  mile  or  so  along  the  old  turnpike  road. 
The  sun  was  still  very  hot  and  the  dust  ankle-deep.  Mr. 
Gano  stopped  meditatively,  and  struck  his  blackthorn  into 
the  gray  "  Mac  Adam  "  powder. 

"  Yet,  in  spite  of  all  this  to  occupy  and  amuse  you,  you 
want  to  turn  your  back  on  it  all." 

"I— what?" 

"'  I  understand  you  are  thinking  of  running  away." 

Val  gave  a  little  gasp,  and  prayed  the  dusty  road  might 
gape  and  swallow  her. 

"I— 1- 

"  Don't  be  frightened,  and  don't  be  sorry  that  I  know," 
he  said,  gently.  "I  think  you  ought  to  have  told  me  be 
fore." 

She  ventured  to  lift  a  pair  of  very  anxious  eves. 

"I  don't  blame  you.     You  are  an  unfortunate  child." 

"Child?  I  am  in  my  sixteenth  year,"  she  interposed, 
with  dignity. 

"You  are  an  unfortunate  child,"  he  repeated,  firmly, 
"with  a  great  deal  of  surplus  energy.  It  must  go  some 
where.  It's  a  law  of  nature  ;  only  I  hadn't  quite  realized 
how  it  was  with  you.  You  never  seemed  at  a  loss." 

"You  knew  I  was  just  dying  for  want  of  proper  music- 
lessons." 

She  could  not  keep  the  excited  tears  out  of  her  eyes. 

"Well,  well!"  her  father  muttered,  leaning  with  both 
hands  on  his  stick  and  scrutinizing  the  dust.  "I  wonder 
if  a  few  music-lessons  couldn't  be  managed." 

"A  few?  I  don't  want  a  few :  I  want  months  and 
years  !  I  want  to  act  and  sing  in  grand  opera,  and — be 
famous,"  she  said,  to  herself,  but  aloud — "make  heaps  of 
money." 

Her  father  turned  to  walk  back  to  the  town,  saying, 
calmly  : 

"Oh,  as  to  acting  and  singing,  ihat  of  course — " 

184 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

She  opened  her  eyes  wide.  Did  he  understand  ?  Was 
he  going  to  relent  ? 

"  A  young  person's  wanting  to  go  on  the  stage  and  as 
tonish  the  world  with  her  genius — that's  natural  enough/' 

Val  began  to  shrink.     She  hadn't  mentioned  genius. 

"It's  a  very  usual  sentiment,  I  believe,  among  young 
people,"  he  went  on,  in  the  same  calm  voice.  "It's  a  fer 
ment  natural  to  their  time  of  life — not  very  serious,  any 
more  than  first  love  or  measles." 

Val  grew  stiffer  and  more  dignified  with  each  word  he 
uttered. 

"  Anybody  would  think  from  what  you  say,  father  "- 
she  was  holding  herself  down  with  difficulty — "  that  peo 
ple  all  gave  up  music  when  they  arrived  at  years  of  discre 
tion.  There  is  such  a  person  as  Patti  after  all,  and  there 
may  be  somebody  somewhere  better  than  Patti,  just" — her 
voice  began  to  shake — "  just  waiting  for  a  little  help." 

"  Ah,  better  than  Patti  !" 

He  smiled.  The  look  of  tender  amusement  fell  like  a 
lash  upon  the  spirit  of  his  child. 

"  Oh  yes,  it's  all  very  well  to  laugh,  father.  You  don't 
care.  Nothing  matters  any  more  to  you.  I  dare  say,  even 
when  you  were  young,  you  didn't  know  what  it  was  like  to 
feel  that  you'd  be  chopped  up  into  little  fine  pieces  rather 
than  go  on  in  the  old  dull  way  that  most  people  do." 

A  quick,  dim  look,  like  the  ghost  of  an  ancient  pain, 
flitted  over  the  worn  face  of  the  man  ;  but  he  walked  on, 
saying  nothing. 

"You  don't  know  what  it's  like  to  look  over  there  for 
years  and  years" — she  flung  out  a  hand  to  the  horizon — 
"and  say  to  yourself,  day  in  and  day  out,  '  Beyond  that 
blue  line  is  the  world  !  Oh,  when  shall  I  be  seeing  the 
world  ?' ':  She  stopped,  and  so  did  her  father,  turning 
now  to  look  at  the  excited  face.  "  Some  people  never  do," 
she  said,  with  a  kind  of  incredulous  horror.  "  I  can't  sleep 
sometimes  for  thinking  of  how,  here  in  New  Plymouth, 
there  are  all  these  people,  with  all  their  senses  (so  far  as 
you  can  see),  and  arms,  and  legs,  and  money,  and  yet  here 

185 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

they  sit,  just  where  they  happened  to  he  dumped — sit  and 
wait  till  they  die  !  Oh,  it's  like  a  nightmare,  thinking  of 
them  !  I  feel  if  I  don't  run  away  quick  while  I'm  awake 
and  able  to  move,  I  shall  freeze  fast  in  my  hole,  too,  and 
never  he  able  to  reach  all  the  beautiful  things  that  are 
waiting — out  there  !"  She  nodded  over  to  the  encircling 
hills.  "'  Think  of  it !"  and  the  bright  tears  tumbled  out  of 
her  shining  eyes. 

"  I  don't  want  my  little  girl  to  miss  any  good  thing/'  he 
said,  presently,  as  they  were  Hearing  the  town. 

"Then  help  me,  father.     Be  kind  to  me." 

She  came  closer,  and  touched  his  sleeve. 

"  But  the  things  waiting  for  those  who  venture  out 
there" — he  turned  a  look  full  of  foreboding  on  the  blue 
horizon  —  "they  aren't  all,  or  even  most  of  them,  good 
things." 

"  No,  no.  I've  heard  that ;  but  I'll  make  the  best  of 
them." 

He  shook  his  head. 

"  You  haven't  a  notion  what  a  hard  world  it  is  for  wom 
en — and  for  men,  my  dear.  I  want  to  save  my  little  girl 
from— 

"  What  does  it  matter  if  I  do  have  a  hard  time  ?  I  ex 
pect  a  hard  time.  Xobody  could  invent  a  time  so  hard 
that  I  couldn't  bear  it,  and  come  out  of  it  !  Oh,  you'll 


Perhaps,  when  you  are  older- 
Older  !"  Her  face  flashed  quick  alarm.  '•'  I'm  dread 
fully  old  already.  I  ought  to  have  begun  when  I  was 
twelve.  There's  little  enough  time  to  learn  all  I  have  to. 
If  I  don't  run  away  quick — father,  I  feel  it  in  my  bones — 
something  will  happen  ;  I  shall  never  go,  I  shall  stick 
here  like  the  rest,  till — till  the  end." 

He  glanced  sideways  at  her.     She  met  his  eyes  with  a 
look  he  had  never  seen  in  them  before. 

"  Val— '"  he  cleared  his  throat  as  they  neared  the  Fort. 
"  Father  !"  she  interrupted  quickly.     "  Don't  ask  me  to 
say  I  won't  run  away.     I  couldn't  keep  such  a  promise." 

186 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  That  was  not  what  I  was  going  to  suggest,"  he  an 
swered,  completing  a  sudden  mental  readjustment.  "  I 
have  nothing  more  to  say  against  your  plan,  only  I  think 
it  must  be  rather  dull  to  run  away  alone.  Suppose  we  run 
away  together  ?" 

"'Together,  father  ?" 

"  Yes  ;  1: — I  think  I'm  on  the  track  of  a  valuable  dis 
covery,  and  I  must  follow* it  up." 

"  Oh— what  r 

"Well,  you  needn't  speak  of  it  to — a — to  any  one,  just  yet. " 

"No,  no,  father."  She  was  strung  up  to  the  great  ro 
mantic  revelation. 

"  Well,  I  believe — indeed,  I  am  sure — that  all  the  hot 
gas  and  blinding  electric  light  in  use  in  most  houses  are 
very  injurious  to  eyesight." 

She  stopped  and  stared  at  him.  Was  he  going  mad  ? 
Had  she  heard  aright  ?  The  great  romantic  revelation 
that  wasn't  to  be  spoken  of  to  any  one — 

He  struck  his  blackthorn  energetically  on  the  ground 
and  went  on  : 

"  The  increase  of  eye  troubles  is  appalling.  What  the 
world  wants  " — he  looked  up  suddenly  with  enthusiasm, 
and  Val  took  heart — f'e  what  the  world  wants  is — is  a  safe 
and  soft -burning  reading-lamp  at  a  moderate  price.  A 
whole  family  shouldn't  depend  on  one  or  two  ;  every  man 
his  own  lamp.  I'm  inventing  it.  I  shall  take  out  a  patent 
next  winter,  and — well,  it  might  make  a  fortune." 

"  How  nice  !"  said  his  daughter,  slowly. 

John  Gano  seemed  to  hear  no  hint  of  disillusionment  in 
the  tone.  He  straightened  himself  up. 

"  Fm  giving  Black  a  share  in  it,"  he  said,  with  a  mag 
nanimous  air,  "for  a  mere  nominal  sum,  which  I  am 
spending  in  inspecting  all  the  new  burners  and,  contri 
vances  ;  they're  all  failures,  not  worth  house-room.  I've 
promised  to  see  Black  in  New  York  next  November,  and 
he  and  I  are  going  on  to  Washington  for  the  patent.  All 
anybody  need  know  is  that  I'm  taking  you  East  with  me 
on  a  little  visit,  and  you  can  look  over  the  field." 

187 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  Father  !  Father!"  she  felt  for  his  hand.  As  they  went 
up  the  tumble-down  steps  to  the  porch,  two  pairs  of  eyes 
were  bent  on  the  blue  horizon. 

AYhat  helped  a  little  to  reconcile  Val  to  waiting  till  No 
vember  was  not  only  the  simplification  of  the  money  ques 
tion,  but  also  the  fact  that  it  gave  her  time  to  carry  out  a 
daring  scheme  that  had  been  suggested  by  the  contents  of 
the  last  foreign  mail.  No  letters  ;  but  addressed  in  cousin 
Ethan's  hand,  a  French  magazine  with  a  queer  mystical 
kind  of  a  story  in  it,  marked,  and  a  London  Pall  Mall  Ga 
zette  with  a  poem  signed  "  E.  G."  It  was  not  the  first 
time  Mrs.  Gaiio  had  received  matters  of  this  sort  in  lieu  of 
a  letter,  and  when  she  did  she  was  always  angrier,  Val 
thought,  than  if  she  had  got  nothing  at  all. 

But  the  poem  in  the  Pall  Mall  set  Val  thinking.  It  was 
no  part  of  her  scheme  of  life  to  have  a  pleasure  trip  to 
New  York  and  return  with  a  mere  "look  over  the  field." 
She  must  lay  her  plans  carefully  and  not  trust  to  luck. 
No  stone  should  be  left  unturned  in  her  endeavor  to  make 
the  most  of  this  glorious  opportunity.  Cousin  Ethan  ! 
Could  he,  perhaps,  be  turned  to  account  ?  If  there  were 
any  influence  or  advice  he  could  offer,  of  course  he  would 
be  most  happy.  Val  would  be  intensely  grateful  to  him  ; 
but  all  the  same,  it  would  be  the  crowning  pride  of  his  life 
that  he  had  helped  to  launch  his  cousin  on  the  tide  of 
fame. 

She  sat  down  and  wrote  to  him  surreptitiously,  made  a 
score  of  drafts,  and  finally  evolved  this  copy  : 

"THE  FOKT,  June  20. 

'  MY  DEAR  COUSIN  ETHAN, — I  have  never  written  to  you  but  once 
since  I  was  a  child.  I  have  never  told  you  anything  except  that  I 
wished  you  'A  Merry  Christmas, 'or  was  glad  you  were  coming — which 
you  know  you  never  did.  I  don't  think  you  ever  will,  and,  besides, 
I  can't  wait  for  you.  It  may  seem  funny  that,  not  knowing  you  any 
better,  I  should  write  you  now  about  a  matter  of  the  deepest  impor 
tance,  but  you  are  my  cousin,  and,  after  my  father,  you  are  my  near 
est  kinsman,  and  I  am  in  need  of  help.  I  want  to  be  a  singer— not  a 
mere  parlor  warbler,  but  a  Great  Singer.  I  have  a  tremendous  voice. 

188 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

I  am  obliged  to  tell  you  this,  since  you  can't  hear  it.  I  practise  every 
day  by  myself,  though  I  can't  use  the  piano  much  on  account  of 
grandma.  I  have  alwa}rs  led  the  singing  at  school  ;  all  the  rest,  near 
ly  three  hundred  girls,  follow.  But  I  have  never  been  able  properly 
to  study  music.  I  was  going  to  run  away  and  be  a  chorus  girl  till  I 
could  earn  enough  to  study  for  grand  opera,  but  my  father  has  in 
duced  me  to  wait — just  a  little.  He  is  going  to  take  me  East  in  the 
full,  and  says  I  may  'Look  over  the  field.'  He  says,  too,  it  will 
give  me  an  opportunity  of  seeing  how  difficult  it  is  to  do  what  I  mean 
to  do.  But  I  don't  think  it's  a  good  plan  to  take  all  that  trouble  (his 
cough  is  very  bad)  just  to  show  me  the  thing  is  difficult.  What  I 
want  to  be  shown  is  the  way — no  matter  how  hard — that  it  may  be 
clone.  The  trouble  is,  that  my  dear  father,  who  knows  many  great 
scientists,  and  a  few  politicians,  doesn't  know  any  famous  singers, 
and  nobody  about  here  does,  and  nobody  seems  to  know  any  one  who 
ever  did  know  an  opera-singer,  much  less  a  manager.  My  grand 
mother  has  often  told  me  that  you  have  artistic  tastes,  and  now  comes 
the  Pall  Mall  of  London  with  your  '  Song  for  Sylvia.'  I've  made 
up  five  tunes  to  it,  and  I  think  you  would  like  them,  since,  unlike 
my  family,  you  are  artistic.  I've  been  thinking  a  person  like  you 
must  have  great  opportunities.  You  probably  know  singers,  mana 
gers,  musicians,  and  all  sorts  of  delightful  people.  I  wonder  if  you 
would  help  me  to  find  out  how  a  girl  with  a  very  exceptional  voice  can 
get  it  heard  and  get  it  trained  ?  I  know  there  are  people  who  do 
these  things,  and  when  they  discover  a  great  voice  they  make  their 
fortunes  ;  so  it  is  not  a  favor  in  the  end  on  the  part  of  the  manager. 
But  if  you  showed  me  the  way,  and  could  lend  me  five  hundred  dol 
lars,  it  would  always  be  a  favor  from  you,  and  I  would  be  grateful  to 
you  for  ever  and  ever.  If  you  will  send  me  a  letter  of  introduction  to 
a  manager,  I  think  that  would  be  best — that  and  five  hundred  dol 
lars — and  perhaps  you  would  be  so  very  kind  as  to  send  me  the  lives 
of  Jenny  Liml  smd  Patti.  It  would  help  me  to  know  what  steps  they 
took.  I  don't  mind  any  hardship  or  any  labor — I  mind  nothing  but 
not  getting  my  chance.  Don't  be  afraid  of  encouraging  me  to  do 
something  the  family  has  not  been  accustomed  to — my  father  is  on 
my  side  ;  and,  anyhow,  they  would  have  to  kill  me  before  they  could 
keep  me  back  now.  So  you  will  not  feel  any  responsibility.  I  would 
rather  be  helped  by  you  because  you  are  my  relation,  but  if  you  won't, 
I  must  find  somebody  else.  I  remain,  your  affectionate  cousin, 

' '  VAL  GANG. 

"P.S. — I  am  a  good  deal  over  fifteen  ;  strangers  all  think  I  am 
twenty. 

"P.S.  No.  2. — Of  course  I  will  pay  back  the  five  hundred  dollars, 
principal  and  interest.  I  will  send  you  a  promissory  note,  like  the 
arithmetic  says." 

180 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

This  document  was  conveyed  to  the  mail  with  secrecy 
and  despatch.  The  days  went  by  like  malicious  snails  ;  she 
had  never  known  time  drag  before.  The  slow  weeks  gath 
ered  into  monotonous  months,  and  still  no  answer.  Never 
mind,  she  would  do  everything  just  the  same — better — 
without  his  help.  Her  future  triumphs  took  on  more  the 
aspect  of  a  judgment  on  cousin  Ethan  than  a  mere  reward 
to  Val.  She  made  up  scenes  of  the  coming  encounters, 
when,  from  the  vantage-ground  of  being  "better  than 
Putti,"  she  would  overwhelm  her  cousin  with  scorn.  She 
would  meet  him  as  a  perfect  stranger,  declare  her  surprise 
at  his  claiming  her  for  his  cousin.  He  would  find  his  chief 
distinction  in  this  kinship.  He  would  lay  his  millions  at 
her  feet.  She  would  spurn  them.  "  I  have  my  own  mil 
lions  now.  Had  it  been  earlier,  cousin,  it  had  been  kind." 

September  was  drawing  to  a  close.  Everything  was 
merging  now  in  the  excitement  of  the  Eastern  trip,  fixed 
for  the  end  of  November. 

Idling  in  the  autumn  sunshine  at  the  front  door  after 
breakfast  one  morning,  Val  and  Emmie  had  a  friendly 
scuffle  as  to  who  should  take  the  mail  from  the  postman. 
The  little  heap  of  letters  and  papers  was  soon  sown  broad 
cast  in  the  fray,  and  still  no  sign  of  either  yielding,  till 
Val  was  arrested  on  catching  sight  of  the  addressed  side  of 
one  of  the  envelopes — "  Mrs.  Sarah  C.  Gano,"  in  cousin 
Ethan's  hand.  But  the  real  significance  lay  in  the  stamp. 
Not  this  time  the  scantily-clad  gentleman  and  lady,  clasp 
ing  hands  over  a  mauve  world,  of  the  Kepublique  Franchise; 
no  goggle-eyed,  mustachioed  Umberto,  in  blue,  with  his 
hair  on  end,  and  Potte  Italiane  Centesimi  Venticinque  round 
him  in  an  oval  frame  ;  it  was  not  even  the  twopenny-half 
penny  indigo  head  of  Queen  Victoria  ;  but  their  own  rosy 
two  -  cent  Washington,  risking  his  health  in  a  low -neck 
coat,  but  saving  his  dignity  by  the  queue.  This  was  the 
first  letter  from  Ethan  in  five  years  that  did  not  bear  a 
foreign  postmark.  While  Val  stood  staring,  Emmie  had 
whipped  up  the  letters  and  carried  them  in  to  her  grand 
mother. 

190 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

Val,  in  an  agony  of  suspense,  remained  in  the  hall.  Pres 
ently  Emmie  came  flying  out,,  clapping  her  hands.  Mrs. 
Gano  followed  briskly  with  the  open  letter. 

"All  those  old  Tallmadges  are  dead!"  cried  Emmie, 
jumping  up  and  down  behind  her  grandmother.  "He's 
been  back  in  America  over  two  months,  and  he's  coming 
here  next  week." 

Mrs.  Gano  was  hurrying  tip-stairs  to  tell  her  son  the  great 
news. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

DESPITE  the  distractions  of  a  host  of  wandering  fancies, 
Ethan  Gano  had  been  kept  fairly  closely  at  his  studies  till 
he  had  passed  his  twentieth  birthday.  To  be  sure,  there 
had  been  a  threatened  interruption  the  spring  before,  when 
he  seemed  suddenly  to  lose  interest  in  his  work,  and  went 
about  with  vacant  looks  and  airs  of  profound  preoccupa 
tion.  Old  Mr.  Tallmadge,  observing  him  narrowly,  decided 
that  his  grandson  had  got  into  debt,  and  that  he  was  ner 
vous  about  confessing.  Ethan  had  never  shown  a  proper 
regard  for  money.  This  was  one  of  the  many  un-Tallmadge- 
like  qualities  developed  by  the  years.  It  was  a  matter  of 
paramount  importance  to  counteract  this  flaw  in  Aaron 
Tallmadge's  sole  surviving  heir,  since  of  late  years  the  old 
man's  affairs  had  prospered  more  than  ever.  About  the 
time  of  his  brother  Elijah's  death,  he  had  financed  a  manu 
facturing  enterprise  which,  starting  on  a  modest  scale,  had 
turned  out  fabulously  successful.  He  was  one  of  the 
"  moneyed  men  "  of  the  State.  In  addition  to  this  piece  of 
shrewd  speculation,  he  found  the  income  from  his  news 
paper  doubled  in  the  last  few  years.  Ah,  yes !  nothing 
was  of  so  much  importance  now  as  Ethan's  fitness  to  gather 
in  and  husband  the  golden  harvest.  If  he  had  been  fur 
ther  exemplifying  his  unthrifty  proclivities,  if  he  needed  to 
be  told  that  borrowing  dulls  the  edge  of  husbandry — Mr. 
Tallmadge,  not  trusting  to  any  unperceived  facilities  for 
impromptu  speech,  rehearsed  mentally  the  lecture  he  would 
administer.  Ethan  mustn't  run  away  with  the  idea  that 
the  Tallmadge  accumulations  were  only  waiting  for  a  lavish 
hand  to  redistribute.  The  first  lesson  a  young  man  with 
his  prospects  must  be  made  to  learn  was  the  value  of  a  dol- 

192 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

lar.  But  Ethan  wore  a  gracious  kind  of  reticence  wrapped 
like  a  mantle  round  his  young  life.  His  grandfather  knew 
very  little  about  him,  but  the  old  man  had  himself  be 
longed  to  the  inarticulate  ones  of  earth,  and  he  never  real 
ized  that,  to  this  quiet,  non-committal  grandson  of  his 
expression  of  some  sort  was  a  master  passion.  How  should 
Aaron  Tallmadge  have  suspected  such  a  thing  ?  Some 
time  before  this  Ethan  quietly,  alone,  without  making  a 
sign,  had  gone  through  a  religious  crisis  not  uncommon 
to  his  age  and  era.  "  No  use  to  upset  the  family,"  he  said 
to  himself  when  he  found  he  had  come  out  on  the  other 
side  of  Tallmadge-Presbyterianism  ;  and  he  went  regularly 
to  church  with  his  grandfather  without  comment  and  with 
out  misgiving.  There  were  still  grave  problems  to  be  faced 
— too  grave,  in  fact,  for  him  to  be  beguiled  into  fancying 
this  was  one. 

Now,  in  the  midst  of  a  perturbation  not  greater,  but  less 
easily  disguised,  he  held  his  peace  as  a  matter  of  course. 
Some  early  developed  quality  of  aloofness  in  him  held  in 
quiry  at  bay.  Then  suddenly  the  clouds  lifted.  He  was 
radiant  and  full  of  covert  smiling. 

Mr.  Tallmadge  resented  this  phase  more  than  the  former 
gloom. 

"  Tie's  paying  heavy  interest,  the  young  fool !  and  can't 
realize  that  that  way  damnation  lies." 

But  all  the  old  man's  clumsy  efforts  to  bring  about  an 
explanation  were  unavailing.  Ethan  declared  with  some 
surprise  that  he  was  not  in  need  of  funds.  Mr.  Tallmadge 
began  to  scrutinize  the  letters  that  came.  Three  mornings 
in  succession  a  business-like  envelope  addressed  in  the  same 
clerkly  hand  !  Alone,  before  the  fire  in  the  dining-room, 
waiting  for  breakfast  that  third  morning,  the  old  man  sol 
emnly  deliberated,  glanced  at  the  clock,  and  grumbled  to 
himself  that  Ethan  would  certainly  be  ten  minutes  late  as 
usual  these  days.  "  Perhaps  he  doesn't  sleep/'  He  exam 
ined  the  suspicious  envelope.  The  flap  was  not  securely 
gummed  down.  Mr.  Tallmadge  glanced  again  at  the  clock. 
He  had  not  the  least  doubt  as  to  his  riht — "  dut  "  he  would 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION* 

have  said — to  open  the  letter  of  this  unconfi cling  minor, 
who  was  his  ward  and  grandson — an  unpractical  youth, 
moreover,  of  absolutely  no  business  capacity  whatever. 
Still,  although  Mr.  Tallmadge  would  never  have  admitted 
it,  he  was  a  little  in  awe  of  this  grandson,  with  so  little 
"Tallmadge'7  in  him.  It  was  essential  to  open  the  letter 
— no  doubt  about  that  ;  but  it  would  be  well  to  have  the 
business  over  before  Ethan  appeared.  Mr.  Tallmadge's 
desire  not  to  be  interrupted  in  the  act  might  have  enlight 
ened  him  as  to  its  defensibility  ;  but  he  was  no  casuist.  He 
took  up  the  letter,  adjusted  his  spectacles,  and  walked  to 
the  window.  Inserting  a  long  finger-nail,  he  easily  pried 
up  the  flap. 

"MY  DARLING  ETHAN, — Your  last  poem  is  the  most  beautiful 
thing  I  ever  read  in  my  life.  It  is  far  more  wonderful  than  anything 
Shelley  ever  did.  I  shall  be  in  the  Beech  Walk  at  five. 

"  Your  wife,  ALMIKA." 

Aaron  Tallmadge  clutched  the  red  damask  curtains,  with 
a  stifled  groan.  The  breakfast  -  bell  clanged  loudly.  Its 
echoes  had  not  time  to  die  before  Ethan  appeared,  with 
shining  morning  face. 

"  Good-morning."  he  said,  lightly,  looking  down  at  his 
plate.  "  No  letters  ?" 

"Yes,  sir."  Mr.  Tallmadge  turned  his  ashen  counte 
nance  round.  "  There  /x  a  letter." 

Ethan  stared  at  him  and  ran  forward. 

"  What's  the  matter  ?     Are  you  ill  ?" 

Mr.  Tallmadge  warded  him  off  with  a  shaking  hand. 

"You  scoundrel  !" 

Ethan  drew  himself  up  arrow  -  straight,  and  his  warm 
brown  eyes  grew  cold. 

"I  knew  there  was  some  devilry  afoot.  I  never  dreamed 
it  was  as  bad  as  this." 

The  old  man  flung  the  open  letter  down  on  the  nearest 
chair. 

Ethan  colored,  catching  sight  of  the  hand. 

"So  you've  been  reading  my  letters?" 

194 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  Yes  ;  I  only  wish  to  the   Lord   I   had  exercised  that 
right  before.     I  might  have  saved  you  from  this  ruin  I" 

—  You  couldn't  have  saved  me,  sir,  if  that's  any  satisfac 
tion." 

—  It's  no  use  to  think  what   might  have   been —       The 
old  man  sat  down,  almost  fell  into  the  chair  by  the  window 
where  he   had   thrown   the   letter.     —  Was  she   a   decent 
woman  ?" 

"  Was  she  a — "  Ethan  repeated,  bewildered. 

"  Who  is  she  ?"  thundered  old  Tallmadge,  with  renewed 


-  Almira  Marlowe." 

"  Marlowe  !     Any  relation  to — ' 

-  Daughter  of  the  new  Professor  of  Physics." 

"Hal    might  be   worse,    I    suppose.      But — Marlowe? 
Marlowe  ?     He's  the  new  man,  isn't  he  ?" 
-Yes." 

—  Marlowe  ?    Why,  it  isn't  a  month  since   he  was   in 
stalled." 

-Six  weeks." 

—  And  all  this  happened  in  six  weeks  ?" 
-Yes." 

Mr.  Tallmadge's  lean  face  worked,  speechless  ;  then,  find 
ing  a  fury-choked  voice  : 

—  Tell  me  the  circumstances,  and  let  me  see  if  anything 
can  be  done." 

-  Nothing  can  be  done.     It's  irrevocable." 

-  But  it  isn't  legal.    You  haven't  a  penny.    You're  under 
age." 

-  We  can  wait." 

-Just  what  you  couldn't  do,  apparently.     You — yon- 
After  he  had  worked  off  his  fit  of  incoherency, he  resumed: 

—  Well,  you've  succeeded  in  wrecking  your  life  pretty 
thoroughly.     And  only  nineteen  !     How  old  is  the  girl  ?" 

-Twenty-one." 

—  I  see,"  muttered  the  old  man.     —  Well,  I  suppose  now 
that  it's  '  irrevocable/  as  you  say,  you'd  better  take  me  into 
your  confidence." 

195 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"I  don't  see  that  you've  left  me  much  choice." 
"  Where  is  she  living  now  ?" 
"  In  Cambridge,"  said  Ethan,  with  some  surprise. 
"  With  her  father  still  ?" 
"  Yes." 

"  You  saw  her  there  ?" 
"  Yes." 
"  When  ?" 

Ethan  grew  scarlet,  and  then,  frowning  doggedly  : 
"  I  saw  her  first  in  her  garden  one  morning' as  I  was  20- 
ing  to  Hall." 
"  Well  ?" 

"  I've  answered  your  question." 

"No,  you  haven't.  I  must  know  the  facts  of  the  case 
before  I  can—  You  made  acquaintance  with  her  that  first 
day  ?" 

"I  didn't  speak  to  her." 

The  old  man  stared  with  mystified  little  eyes  at  his  grand 
son's  flushed  face. 

"  She  was  there  every  day  when  you  passed  by  ?" 
"Yes." 

"  U'm  !  Of  course  she  would  be  there.  When  did  you 
speak  to  her  ?" 

"Not  for  three  weeks." 
lie  half  turned  away. 
"  Good  Lord  !     Barely  a  fortnight  ago  !" 
Ethan  didn't  deny  it. 
"  How  did  you  come  to  know  her  ?" 
The  young  face  grew  dark.     lie  was  writhing  under  the 
catechism. 

"Charlie  Hammond  showed  her  a  poem  I  had  written  for 
the  Harvard  Oracle.     She  sent  me  a  message  about  it  " 
"  Well  ?" 

"  Then  I  went  to  call  with  Hammond." 
"Well?" 

"  Then— then  I  met  her  in  the  Beech  Walk  " 
"Ah!     The  Beech  Walk." 
"Yes;  twice." 

10(5 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  And  then  ?" 

"That's  all." 

" Don't  tell  me  lies,  sir!" 

Ethan  stood  before  him  cold  and  rigid  on  a  sudden.  No 
flush  now  on  the  clear-cut  features. 

"  You've  no  right  to  speak  to  me  as  you're  doing,  not  if 
you  were  fifty  grandfathers." 

"  Where  did  these  other  meetings  take  place,  sir  ?  Did 
old  Marlowe  countenance  them  ?" 

"  There  were  no  other  meetings." 

Ethan  turned  away. 

"  Now,  look  here  !" — the  old  man  arraigned  him  with  a 
shaking  hand — "you  can't  undo  the  bitter  disappointment 
you  are  to  me,  but  you  can  and  you  owe  it  to  me  to  tell 
me  fairly  and  squarely  the  details  of  this  wretched  business. 
I  can't  proceed  in  the  matter  if  I'm.  in  the  dark." 

"  You  proceed  in  the  matter  ?" 

Ethan  wheeled  about  and  faced  him. 

"It's  quite  plain  that  you  were  merely  a  yielding  fool  in 
the  matter — girl  older,  and  you — 

"Grandfather  !" 

"  — and  you  easy  to  convince  that  you  ought  to  make 
reparation." 

Ethan  seemed  to  have  ears  only  for  the  first  part  of  this 
accusation.  He  spoke  through  Mr.  Tallmadge's  last  words 
with  a  passionate  shake  in  his  voice. 

"  It's  quite  plain,  at  all  events,  grandfather,  that  I 
love  her,  and  that  nothing  in  heaven  or  on  earth  can 
part  us." 

"  Of  course — of  course.  A  fortnight — a  girl  you  barely 
knew  by  sight!" 

"  I  know  her  absolutely.  There  isn't  another  like  her  on 
this  earth." 

"  And  you  want  me  to  believe  you've  spoken  to  her  only 
three  or  four  times  in  your  life  ?" 

"I  don't  specially  want  you  to  believe  it,  but  it's  true." 

"  Who  could  you  find  to  marry  you  ?" 

"  Who  could  I — to  marry  me  ?"     He  looked  as  if  he  had 

197 


THE   OPEN    QUESTION 

begun  to  doubt  tbe  old  man's  sanity.     "Why,  I've  never 
asked  anybody  but  Almira." 

"  Yes,  yes,  yes.  Who  could  you  find  to  overlook  the  age 
question  ?  Who  performed  the  ceremony  ?'' 

"  Ceremony  ?" 

"  Oh,  ho  !  Registry-office  performance,  eh  ?  and  perjury ! 
Monstrous  irreligion  !  My  grandson  I" 

"  What  do  you  mean  ?"  But  a  light  was  beginning  to 
dawn. 

"  Who  were  your  witnesses  ?" 

Ethan  laughed  and  flushed,  and  then  grew  serious  again. 

"  Of  course,  it's  exactly  the  same  as  if  we  were  married, 
exactly  the  same."  He  flashed  a  broadside  of  defiance  out 
of  shining  eyes.  "But  we  know  we  can't  well  be  married 
while  I'm  a  minor,  and — 

"  You  aren't  married  ?" 

"Oh  no.     But- 

"  Then,  what  in  the  name  of  Jehoshaphat  is  all  this 
Qdmned — what's  all  this  disturbance  about  ?'' 

"  I'm  sure  I  don't  know.'' 

Mr.  Tallmadge  mopped  his  brow,  and  looked  about  dis 
tractedly,  like  one  who  has  lost  his  thread  in  a  labyrinth. 

"  However,  it's  exactly  the  same  as  if  we  were — 

"  Exactly  tomfool  !'' 

The  old  man  got  up  and  walked  a  few  shaky  paces  back 
and  forth.  Turning,  he  caught  sight  of  the  letter  he'd 
been  sitting  upon. 

"  Wife!"  he  exclaimed.  "What  the  d—  What  does 
she  mean  by  calling  herself  your — "  and  he  stopped  sud 
denly  with  a  look  of  contemptuous  comprehension. 

"Does  she  ?" 

Ethan,  with  a  start  forward,  had  clutched  the  letter 
greedily.  He  couldn't,  perhaps  he  didn't  even  try  to  keep 
the  great  gladness  out  of  his  face  as  he  read.  Mr.  Tall 
madge  watched  him  with  equivocal  eyes.  Then,  dryly  : 

"  If  I  were  in  your  shoes  that  signature  would  alarm 
me." 

"  I  think  it  very  beautiful  of  her,"  said  Ethan,  softly. 

198 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"And  not  alarming  ?" 

"Alarming?"  He  knitted  puzzled  brows.  "I  begged 
her  to  think  of  me  as — like  this." 

There  was  a  pause. 

"It's  not  her  doing,"  he  resumed,  hastily,  striking  out 
at  some  indistinct  enemy  lurking  behind  the  old  man's 
looks.  "  No  ceremony  could  make  us  surer  of  each  other. 
That's  why  we're  not  unhappy.  It's  exactly  the  same  as  if 
we  were  married." 

"Exactly?"  He  eyed  the  young  face  shrewdly,  and 
then,  a  little  baffled  by  its  mixture  of  sensitive  shrinking 
and  frank  defiance  :  "  You  will  oblige  me  by  not  keeping 
this  appointment " — he  motioned  to  the  letter. 

"  I'm  sorry  I  can't  oblige  you,  sir." 

"  Reflect  a  moment." 

"  I  can't  even  reflect  about  it.  She's  going  away  to-mor 
row  to  spend  several  months  with  her  sister.  After  that 
she  goes  back  to  Vassar.  I  may  not  see  her  again  till  next 
summer." 

"You  don't  mean  she's  going  back  to  school  this  fall?" 

"Yes,  She  lost  a  year.  They  couldn't  afford —  But 
now  she's  going  to  finish  her  course." 

"  Good  Lord  !" 

"I  beg  your  pardon." 

"  There's  no  reason  why  she  shouldn't  go  back  to  school  ?" 

' ( Reason  why —  ?     No. " 

A  light  broke,  or  rather  a  darkness  spread,  over  the 
young  man's  face,  wiping  out  the  grace,  stamping  it  fierce 
ly  with  detestation  of  him  who  had  dared  think  insulting 
thoughts  of  Almira.  But  the  old  man  was  smiling  and 
rubbing  his  parchment  hands. 

"  Tempest  in  a  teacup  !  Come  and  have  breakfast," 
he  said,  walking  to  the  table ;  "  everything's  getting 
cold." 

But  Ethan  put  the  letter  of  the  clerkly  hand  into  his 
breast-pocket,  and  went  towering  out  of  the  room. 

Aaron  Tallmadge  chuckled  genially  as  he  rang  for  hot 
buckwheat  cakes. 

199 


THE    Ol'EN    QUESTION 

"Romantic!  absurd!  Great  baby!*'  ho  muttered,  and 
opened  tbe  morning  paper — bis  paper — Ethan's  by-and-by. 

Ethan  had  not  needed  his  grandfather's  recommendation 
to  abstain  from  mentioning  in  any  letter  to  Mrs.  Gano  that 
her  more  and  more  irregular  correspondent  had  been  ill 
that  last  severe  winter  before  he  came  of  age,  or  that  he 
considered  himself  engaged  to  be  married  to  a  girl  older 
than  himself  and  penniless.  Mr.  Tallrnadge  persistently 
affected  to  put  this  last  achievement  aside  as  sheer  youth 
ful  nonsense.  But  those  letters  in  the  misleading  hand 
came  to  Ashburton  Place  with  irritating  regularity.  He 
began  secretly  to  await  with  no  small  anxiety  Ethan's  view 
of  the  moral  as  well  as  legal  liberty  conferred  by  the  dis 
tinction  of  being  twenty-one.  Before  that  moment  arrived, 
the  doctors  were  agreeing  that  the  young  man  must  not, 
till  his  health  should  be  established,  spend  another  Christ 
mas  in  New  England. 

"  At  the  end  of  the  Indian  summer  away  with  him/' 

"By  all  means,"  said  Mr.  Tallmadge.  "Why  wait  even 
for  the  summer  ?  All  he  needs  is  a  thorough  change/' 

The  old  man  was  thinking — thinking  not  alone  of  the 
health,  but  ambitiously  of  the  future,  of  his  grandson. 

"  Where  shall  I  send  him  ?"  asked  Mr.  Tallmadge. 

"  It  doesn't  much  matter  where  he  is  in  the  summer," 
the  doctors  agreed  ;  "  but  get  him  south  of  Mason  and  Dix- 
on's  line  next  winter." 

These  insensate  medicos  had  no  bowels  of  political  com 
passion.  They  must  have  known  well  enough  that  the 
region  indicated  was  not  a  part  of  the  world  lightly  to  be 
recommended  to  Aaron  Tallmadge. 

' *  I'll  go  and  visit  my  Gano  relations,"  Ethan  had  said, 
promptly. 

"  You'll  do  nothing  of  the  kind,"  returned  his  grandfa 
ther.  "It's  no  reason,  because  you  feel  the  cold  here,  that 
I  should  send  you  where  you'd  catch  yellow  fever  and 
malaria." 

From  the  Tallmadge  point  of  view,  Mason  and  Dixon's 
line  did  no  less  than  divide  habitable  from  uninhabitable 

200 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

America.  Voluntarily  to  cross  the  kindly  boundary  was 
contrary  to  reason.  There  was  no  difficulty  in  deciding 
that  Italy  or  the  South  of  France  would  be  more  advan 
tageous  for  the  young  man's  conversance  with  modern  lan 
guages,  as  well  as  farther  away  from  Almira  Marlowe,  and 
more  tolerable  to  his  grandfather  and  guardian  than  Vir 
ginia  or  Florida. 

Mr.  Talhnadge's  capable  junior  partner  was  able  to  re 
lieve  his  chief  of  all  active  concern  in  the  conduct  of  busi 
ness  till  Ethan  should  be  ready  to  assume  command.  To 
this  latter  end,  a  few  years"  foreign  travel,  and  a  thorough 
re-establishment  of  the  young  man's  health,  were  next  in 
order.  The  plan  worked  well  on  the  health  score.  A  sum 
mer  in  England  and  a  winter  on  the  Riviera  seemed  to 
have  set  Ethan  free  from  the  family  infirmity,  but  also  to 
have  whetted  his  appetite  for  foreign  life,  and  increased  his 
indifference  to  the  proud  post  of  chief  proprietor  of  the 
greatest  Republican  organ  in  New  England.  But  this 
might  be  merely  the  first  effects  of  Miss  Almim's  having 
thrown  over  her  first  love  and  married  a  lawyer  in  Pough- 
keepsie,  New  York. 

After  all,  Mr.  Tallrnadge  reflected,  his  grandson  was  still 
very  young,  and  intimate  knowledge  of  life  in  other  lands 
might  not  come  amiss.  So  the  energetic  old  man  went  to 
and  fro,  joining  Ethan,  now  in  Paris,  now  in  London,  trav 
elling  about  with  him  during  the  summer,  and  returning 
alone  to  "  the  great  Republican  organ "  in  the  autumn, 
leaving  his  grandson  to  new  friends,  new  pursuits,  and 
warmer  winter  haunts. 

The  young  man  was  not  all  this  time  merely  seeing  life, 
he  was  recording  it  in  desultory  fashion.  Some  of  his 
verses  appearing  in  English  periodicals  raised  a  little  dust 
of  praise  among  a  set  in  London  calling  itself  critical.  But 
it  was  the  French  point  of  view  that  most  appealed  to  him. 

He  was  under  that  spell  which  France  knows  so  well  how 
to  cast  round  the  young  man  of  artistic  instinct.  Her 
tongue  was  the  peerless  language  of  letters.  Through  no 
medium  less  supple,  less  subtle,  could  the  complexities  of 

201 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION' 

modern  life  and  thought  hope  for  adequate  literary  expres 
sion. 

And  so  the  pleasant  facile  days  went  by  in  idly  roving, 
idly  writing,  meeting  interrogatively  his  predestinate  ex 
perience  and  setting  the  more  presentable  answers  down. 
Where  answer  there  was  none,  he  aped  the  older  men,  whom 
he  called  "Masters,"  and  made  shift  with  more  or  less 
cynical  guesses.  It  was  these  last  that  brought  him  his 
little  meed  of  precocious  success.  He  had  not  originality 
enough  to  see  that  the  cynicism  was  not  his  own.  He  was 
not,  and  seemingly  was  not  to  be,  of  the  stature  that  can 
wear  simple  sincerity  in  the  grand  manner.  That  writer, 
young  or  old,  must  have  something  of  true  greatness  in 
him  who  can  hold  out  long  in  these  days  against  the  flat 
tering  temptation  of  hinting  that  he  is  laughing  in  his 
sleeve  at  all  solemn  persons.  And  yet  no  doubt  seriousness 
was  the  dominant  note  in  the  young  American's  character, 
a  seriousness  that  still  looked  askance  at  itself,  and  smiled 
oftener  at  its  own  gravity  than  at  any  other  wrinkle  in  the 
tragi-comic  mask  of  humanity. 

He  had  seen  something  of  what  people  in  London  and 
Paris  called  "  society,"  had  been  very  well  amused,  but  not 
enamoured  of  it.  When  men  who  made  letters  a  profession 
—perhaps  one  should  say  trade — admonished  him  :  "  Never 
refuse  a  swagger  invitation.  Your  opportunities,  consider 
ing  you're  a  foreigner,  are  simply  unheard  of.  Go  every 
where,  see  everything.  You  must  know  life  before  you  can 
write  about  it,"  Ethan  would  say,  half  impatiently  :  "  As 
if  you  could  escape  from  life  !  As  if  art  kept  her  treasures 
in  the  jewel-cases  of  the  aristocracy,  and  never  displayed 
them  except  at  social  functions  !" 

Even  in  indulgent  Paris'  he  was  a  good  deal  chaffed  about 
his  success  with  the  fair.  It  is  a  thing  other  men  reconcile 
themselves  to  with  difficulty.  Some  one  said  once  to 
Ethan's  old  school  friend,  De  Poincy  : 

"  No  one  but  a  woman  has  any  business  to  be  as  good- 
looking  as  that  fellow  Gano.  I  couldn't  trust  a  man  with 
a  face  like  that.'"' 

202 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  Oh,  you  may  trust  him  right  enough/'  De  Poincy  an 
swered.  "And  as  to  his  face — look  at  that  jaw  of  his." 

"Anything  the  matter  with  his  jaw  ?" 

"  There's  ( man '  enough  in  that  to  relieve  your  mind. 
Oh,  he's  a  stubborn  brute,  Gano  is  ;  but  you  can  trust 
him."  And  people  did  trust  him. 

But  not  only  did  he  tire  presently  of  the  gay  and  flaunt 
ing  aspect  of  social  life,  his  fastidiousness  by-and-by  turned 
aside  as  well  from  those  less  presentable  experiences  that 
dog  the  rich  and  idle  youth  of  capitals. 

At  first  \vith  a  dull  old  tutor,  and  presently  without  him, 
he  had  for  headquarters  a  tiny  appartement  in  Paris.  It 
was  there,  or  with  the  De  Poincys  in  Nice,  that  he  felt 
most  at  home.  Something  over  two  years  had  gone  by  in 
this  agreeable  fashion  when  his  grandfather  addressed  to 
him  a  temperate  but  very  serious  letter  inviting  him  to  re 
turn,  either  to  complete  his  interrupted  studies  "  on  Ameri 
can  lines,"  or  to  enter  at  once  on  his  initiation  into  the 
practical  duties  of  editorship.  Ethan  at  first  temporized, 
and  then,  being  pressed,  declined  to  pursue  either  course. 
He  "liked  living  abroad/'  This  fact,  thus  stated,  greatly 
irritated  old  Tallmadge.  He  ordered  his  grandson  home. 
Ethan  wrote,  still  very  politely,  but  quite  definitely,  re 
fusing  to  come  just  then.  Mr.  Tallmadge,  angrier  than 
ever,  cabled,  "  Is  it  on  account  of  health  ?  Are  you  afraid 
of  climate  ?"  Ethan  cabled  back  :  "  Perfectly  well.  Pre 
fer  Paris." 

This  lack  of  patriotism  on  the  part  of  a  grandson  of  his 
seemed  to  Aaron  Tallmadge  nothing  short  of  revolutionary. 
It  was  no  use  Ethan's  quoting  to  him,  Tout  Iwmme  a  deux 
pays,  le  sien  et  puis  la  France.  The  more  Mr.  Tallmadge 
pondered  the  matter,  the  more  he  felt  convinced  that  this 
incredible  preference  for  Paris  was  the  shameful  mask  of 
some  other  preference.  "  Some  woman's  got  hold  of  him 
again,"  he  decided.  "I'll  soon  settle  that."  Whereupon 
he  wired  :  "  Come  right  home,  or  I  stop  allowance." 

Then  was  his  grandson  most  unreasonably  angry.  He 
sent  back,  in  a  blank  sheet  of  writing-paper,  the  recently 

203 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

received  check  for  the  next  quarter,  which  he  had  neglect 
ed  to  cash,  and  he  looked  about  for  employment.  Henri 
de  Poincy,  who  had  recently  passed  into  the  diplomatic 
service,  was  now  in  Russia  ;  but  young  Gano  started  out 
on  his  quest  of  a  living  with  no  foreboding.  He  went  to 
see  various  men  of  affairs,  firm  friends  of  his,  he  felt  con 
vinced,  and  stated  the  case  ;  in  fact,  a  cooler  head  than 
Ethan's  might  have  suspected  he  overstated  it.  It  was 
true  he  had  received  a  "final"  letter,  which  he  thought 
most  insulting,  full  of  a  crudely  expressed  conviction  that 
Ethan  was  in  the  toils  of  some  foreign  woman,  and  saying 
that  unless  he  returned  instantly  his  grandfather  would 
know  this  suspicion  was  well  founded,  in  which  case  the 
young  man  had  nothing  to  expect  from  him  in  the  future. 

Those  persons  of  influence  whom  young  Gano  had  con 
sulted  in  his  dilemma  all  promised  to  keep  him  in  mind 
and  see  what  they  could  do,  and  most  of  them  thereafter 
forgot  even  to  invite  him  to  dinner.  He  began  to  realize 
that  being  a  young  American  of  leisure,  with  no  axe  to 
grind,  with  an  absurdly  large  income  for  a  man  of  his  years, 
and  known  to  be  sole  heir  to  one  of  the  big  fortunes  "in 
the  States,"  was  an  altogether  different  matter  from  being 
a  person  suddenly  bereft  of  these  advantages.  He  gave  up 
his  charming  appartemcnt  in  the  Champs-Elysees,  and  pres 
ently  found  that  he  couldn't  keep  even  the  single  room  he 
had  taken  in  the  Hue  de  Miromunil.  He  moved  to  the  Hue 
de  Provence. 

lie  was  in  low  water — very  low  water,  indeed — before  he 
got  the  post  of  Parisian  correspondent  on  a  London  paper. 
With  this  diminutive  buoy  he  managed  to  keep  afloat ;  but 
his  former  position  as  an  independent  young  gentleman 
with  large  expectations  was  blown  upon,  and  no  one  more 
hypersensitive  than  he  to  the  outward  and  visible  signs  of 
people's  appreciation  of  his  altered  circumstances.  He 
withdrew  more  and  more  from  the  swim.  Smart  Parisian 
society  and  the  rich  American  colony  knew  him  no  more. 
After  a  while  his  English  editor  complained  that  his  news 
was  becoming  too  exclusively  "literary  and  artistic  ;  we ex- 

204 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

pected  something  about  the  races  last  week.  Give  us  more 
society." 

To  this  the  Parisian  correspondent  replied  :  "  I  never 
yet  wrote  about  society  unless  indirectly,  and  I  do  not  pro 
pose  to  begin." 

"There  was  formerly,"  persisted  the  editor,  who  knew 
quite  well  what  he  wanted,  "a  flavor  of  the  fashionable 
world  about  your  Parisian  irotes,  which  our  readers  miss. 
French  art  and  Bohemia  are  overdone." 

Gano  sold  some  valuable  books,  and  went  over  to  London 
with  the  proceeds  to  have  it  out  with  the  editor.  The  up 
shot  of  the  interview  was  that  he  declined  to  furnish  any 
more  "Notes."  The  editor  seemed  perfectly  resigned. 
However,  after  the  struggle  in  Paris,  Gano  was  convinced 
that  London  was  the  likelier  place  for  him  to  find  a  foot 
ing.  In  the  background  of  his  mind  he  had  already,  when 
he  sold  his  books,  foreseen  and  accepted  the  result  of  the 
further  discussion  of  his  "  Notes."  He  would  at  all  events 
be  on  the  spot  in  London,  and  would  quickly  find  some 
opening.  Talent  was  not  the  drug  in  the  market  here,  he 
told  himself,  that  it  was  in  France. 


CHAPTER  XV 

• 

Axn  day  after  day,  week  after  week,  while  lie  sought  an 
opening,  he  very  nearly  starved.  In  a  couple  of  months 
he  had  arrived  at  the  conclusion  that  the  fight  in  London 
was  more  sordid  and  more  dispiriting  than  the  direst 
poverty  in  Paris.  About  this  time  he  came  in  for  a  dis 
tasteful  piece  of  hack  journalism,  that  brought  him  a  dis 
proportionate  loathing  and  an  inadequate  reward  of  five 
pounds.  He  was  strongly  tempted  to  invest  a  part  of  this 
sole  capital  in  returning  to  France.  A  couple  of  days  later 
a  letter  arrived  through  the  London  branch  of  the  Paris 
bankers  from  Henri  de  Poincy,  back  in  the  South  of  France 
on  a  holiday.  Ho  asked  for  Ethan's  private  address,  and 
said  if  he  did  not  hear  something  satisfactory  by  return  he 
would  conclude  the  beastly  English  climate  had  made  him 
ill  ;  in  which  case  he  was  straightway  coming  over  to  look 
Ethan  up,  and  persuade  him  to  return  to  his  friends  in 
Nice.  If  he  did  not  hear  by  wire  or  letter  in  three  days, 
DC  Poincy  would  come  to  London  and  see  what  was  the 
matter.  They  were  all  anxious  at  his  silence. 

This  determined  the  matter.  Gano  was  not  going  to 
have  his  old  friend  find  him  in  his  present  plight.  Be 
sides,  he  already  owed  him  money,  and  had  sworn  to  him 
self  that  he  would  not  meet  De  Poincy  again  till  he  could 
go  to  him  with  the  sum  in  his  hands.  Henri  was  far  from 
well  off,  and,  since  his  father's  death  the  year  before,  had 
helped  to  support  his  sisters.  Ethan  wired:  <%  Leaving 
London  ;  quite  well  ;  remembrance  to  all  ;  writing,"  and 
took  the  night-boat  to  Dieppe.  He  delayed  further  com 
munication  till  he  knew  Henri  would  be  back  in  Peters 
burg,  and  by  that  time  he  was  able,  by  living  on  next  to 

200 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

nothing,  to  return  a  part  of  the  loan,  and  to  represent  him 
self  as  intensely  glad  to  be  in  his  old  haunts  again.  These 
haunts  were  in  reality  very  new,  albeit  in  Paris  ;  but  he 
did  not  enter  into  details  further  than  to  say  he  was  redis 
covering  the  fact  that  he  could  write  French  much  more 
easily  and  much  better  than  he  could  English,  and  was  do 
ing  some  book-reviewing  for  the  Lendemain. 

He  might  have  added,  but  did  not,  that  he  was  getting 
at  first-hand  a  very  considerable  knowledge  of  the  darker 
side  of  life,  but  had  no  impulse  to  make  artistic  use  of  it. 
It  did  not  stimulate,  it  did  not  even  interest — it  paralyzed 
him.  "  If  I'd  had  the  makings  of  a  genuine  poet  in  me," 
he  admitted  to  Henri  de  Poincy  afterwards,  "  those  years 
might  have  buifeted  some  good  work  out  of  me.  But  my 
muse  was  a  miserable  time-server,  like  the  rest  of  my  fine 
acquaintance.  She  left  me  when  I  wanted  bread.  The 
fact  was,  I  was  feeling  life  too  keenly  to  write  about  it. 
Poetizing  in  the  face  of  such  suffering  as  I  saw  and  shared 
seemed  a  drivelling  impertinence.  Life  was  more  terrible, 
more  tremendous  than  anything  any  poet  had  said  about  it, 
or  could  say." 

Gano  was  unconsciously  making  of  himself  an  obscure 
example  of  the  fact  that  a  man's  temperament  will  find 
him  out  upon  the  removal  of  the  artificial  ballast.  This 
removal  so  seldom  takes  place  that  the  vaguest  notions 
abound  as  to  any  given  person's  specific  gravity.  We  go 
through  life  unconsciously  floated,  balanced,  by  family,  by 
inherited  friends,  inherited  pursuits,  inherited  opinions, 
inherited  money — by  a  thousand  conditions  not  made  by 
ourselves,  but  found  ready-made  to  our  hands,  an  expres 
sion  of  other  people's  energy,  supporting  or  neutralizing  out- 
own.  Gano's  inclinations,  not  being  volcanic  or  epoch- 
making,  had  been,  up  to  the  time  of  the  break  with  his 
grandfather,  dutifully  filtered  through  environing  circum 
stance.  Even  so,  Mr.  Tallmadge  had  had  occasion  to 
condemn  his  grandson's  "queer  tastes,"  his  "visionary 
notions,"  his  girlish  compassion  for  suffering,  his  hyper- 
sensitiveness  to  blame,  his  even  greater  shrinking  from 

207 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

hurting  the  feelings  of  others.  The  tough  old  New  Eng- 
liincler's  contempt  for  "sensitiveness"  had  at  least  done 
Ethan  the  service  of  giving  him  an  exterior  self-control, 
which  seemed  so  far  to  deny  the  feelings  it  only  masked, 
that  he  was  able  to  pass  comfortably  in  the  crowd  as  a  per 
son  more  impassive,  if  anything,  than  the  majority.  But 
as  soon  as  he  was  left  to  himself,  and  followed  no  longer 
by  critical  eyes,  his  natural  bias  announced  itself.  He  felt 
less  and  less  drawn  to  the  insouciant  artist  life  of  the  town  ; 
the  happy-go-lucky  ways  lost  their  first  fresh  savor;  the 
suppers,  the  orgies,  the  endless  comment,  quite  as  eager  as 
any  of  the  work  and  often  more  brilliant  ;  the  short,  merry 
life  of  the  happy  little  flies  that  buzz  so  busily  about  the 
flower-garden  of  art,  and  that  vanish  with  the  vanishing  of 
day — they  all  ended  by  striking  some  note  of  discord  in 
him,  and  making  him  feel  out  of  place  there.  "  Was  he 
getting  too  old  for  this  kind  of  thing  ?"  he  asked  himself, 
with  modern  youth's  morbid  consciousness  of  the  value 
certain  people  set  upon  one  time  of  life  to  the  exclusion  of 
any  other,,  forgetting  that  "  to  travel  deliberately  through 
one's  ages  is  to  get  the  heart  out  of  a  liberal  education,'' 
and  the  heart  out  of  enlightened  satisfaction  as  well. 

But  Gano  was,  perhaps,  only  following  the  unwritten  law 
that  rules  such  haunts  and  their  frequenters,  for  these  gay 
Bohemians  are  all  young — and  very  young  indeed.  No  one 
knows  where  they  go  when  their  short  hour  is  done.  Their 
laughter  lags  a  little  behind  the  rest  one  day,  and  the  next 
they  are  not  there.  A  new  face  is  in  the  old  place,  a 
younger  voice  is  screaming  theories  and  outlaughing  the 
laughers  who  arc  left. 

Gano  knew  whither  one  of  these  superannuated  revellers 
of  twenty-five  or  so  had  retired.  This  was  a  great  good- 
looking  Irishman,  with  an  unaccountable  French  tongue 
in  his  rough,  tawny  head,  the  hardest  worker,  deepest 
drinker,  and  wildest  theorist  in  the  particular  little  circle 
that  Gano  had  of  late  frequented.  Dick  Driscoll  and  he 
had  got  into  the  habit  of  coming  away  together  from  the 
modest  cafe  where  the  circle  met.  Now  and  then  the 

208 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

older  man  would  drag  Gano  off  on  some  wild  adventure,  or 
they  would  scour  Paris  with  no  definite  end  in  view,  argu 
ing,  disputing,  catching  effects,  till  midnight  met  the 
dawn.  From  living  in  the  same  quarter  they  came  by- 
and-by  to  live  under  the  same  roof,  as  a  direct  result  of 
the  Irishman's  being  as  ready  to  discuss  theories  of  life  in 
general,  or  even  Gano's  work  in  particular,  as  he  had  been 
to  harangue  "  the  painter  fellows  "  about  brushwork  and 
values. 

He  pronounced  those  early  poems  "most  awfully  good, 
you  know,"  and  prophesied  great  things  for  the  future. 
But  for  all  this,  deeper  and  deeper  the  conviction  cut  into 
Gano  that  he  was  .not  of  the  stuff  that  "makes  its  way  in 
the  world."  This  without  any  of  the  feeling  that  usually 
accompanies  it — of  contempt  for  those  who  were  different 
ly  constituted.  He  sometimes  soothed  his  harassed  spirit, 
and  consoled  himself  for  his  failures,  by  an  odd  inversion 
of  common  hopes.  He  bade  himself  realize  that  success 
would  not  bring  him  happiness,  so  why  join  the  thought 
less  chorus  condemning  poverty,  obscurity,  and  hard  work  ? 
These  last  were  not  the  heads  of  his  indictment  against 
life.  At  other  times  he  would  shut  his  eyes  to  this  revela 
tion  of  himself  to  himself.  "Skin-deep!  skin-deep,  like 
yours  !"  he  burst  out  at  Driscoll's  observation  on  his 
friend's  growing  dissatisfaction  with  the  scheme  of  things. 

The  Irishman  was  rather  proud  of  his  Schopenhauerism. 
It  represented  to  him  a  mere  mental  gymnastic.  This, 
too,  although  hard  work,  hard  living,  and  hard  drinking 
had  injured  his  health,  and  the  fact  was  more  and  more 
apparent.  However,  it  is  something  behind  experience 
that  determines  whether  a  man  shall  be  an  optimist  or  not. 
Gano  shrank  from  an  imputation  of  pessimism,  as  people 
do  in  whom  the  tendency  is  inborn  and  inveterate.  "I 
tell  you,  Driscoll,  if  we  weren't  sharing  it,  we  would  think 
there  was  some  good  served  by  the  ugliness  and  pain  in  the 
world,  just  as  our  betters  do.  If  we  took  our  place  again 
in  the  holiday-making  class,  we  should  be  as  diverted  as 
the  rest,  with  all  the  games  and  make-believes.  We,  too, 

209 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

should  forget  the  essential  cruelty  of  things."     But  behind 
the  boast  was  a  heart-sinking,  and  a  sense  that  it  was  a  lie. 

He  would  try  again  :  "  Because  life  has  treated  me 
cavalierly  I  think  I  have  little  zest  for  it.  If  I  weren't 
bruised  from  crown  to  toe,  I'd  think  the  world  a  bed  of 
roses."  And  then  he  would  remember  that  that  was  far 
from  being  the  account  he  would  ever  have  given  of  his 
consciousness  of  things. 

Before  he  betook  himself  to  Bohemia,  Gano  had  spent 
no  small  portion  of  his  time  in  the  brilliant  circle  Madame 
Astier's  grace  and  wit  had  gathered  round  her.  The 
young  American  not  only  cherished  an  enthusiasm  for  his 
middle-aged  hostess,  but  he  discovered  a  deep  admiration 
as  well  for  the  lady's  husband,  a  distinguished  advocate, 
whom  she  obviously  adored.  Gano's  sensibilities  did,  it  is 
true,  shrink  at  first  before  the  man's  pitiless  cynicism,  which 
spared  few  persons  and  fewer  ideals.  But  although  mere 
ly  dazzled  at  the  beginning  by  his  brilliancy,  Gano  came  in 
time  to  be  proud  of  his  friendship,  and  to  recognize  in  his 
point  of  view  a  wholesome,  bitter  tonic,  a  corrective  to  cer 
tain  ills  that  young  flesh  is  heir  to.  This  man  of  fifty- 
four,  who  would  have  shrugged  derisively  at  the  notion  of 
"teaching"  anybody  anything,  was  still  in  many  young 
eyes  the  very  type  of  the  modern  philosopher  :  believing 
blandly  in  the  scientific  point  of  view,  unmoved  by  senti 
mentalities,  unblinded  by  enthusiasms,  keen-witted,  far- 
sighted,  practising  with  eminent  success,  in  the  most  high 
ly  civilized  society  in  the  world,  the  most  difficult  of  the 
arts — the  art  of  living. 

Gano  was  very  much  shaken  by  the  terrible  story  of  the 
double  suicide  of  this  brilliant  pair,  whose  marriage  had 
been  so  romantic,  whose  life  together  had  seemed  the  one 
ideal  of  the  old  kind  that  they  admitted  into  their  smiling 
existence. 

M.  Astier,  as  all  the  world  was  being  told,  had  returned 
home  as  usual  on  this  particular  afternoon  from  the  Palais 
de  Justice.  His  wife  had  been  holding  a  reception.  One 
lady  remained  after  the  other  visitors  had  gone.  When  at 

210 


OTEX    QUESTION 

last  the  door  closed  upon  her,  too,  Madame  Astier  went  to 
her  husband's  library  and  told  him  that  the  last  visitor  had 
outstayed  the  others  to  say  that  her  husband  was  going  to 
fight  a  duel  on  her  account  the  next  day  with  M.  Astier, 
with  whom  she  (the  visitor)  had  an  intrigue  of  three  years' 
standing.  She  had  come  to  Madame  Astier  to  prevent  the 
men's  meeting. 

A  violent  scene  between  husband  and  wife. 

"The  end  has  come  I"  exclaims  Astier. 

"Yes,  yes;  we  can't  go  on  living  after  this  !"  cries  the 
distracted  wife. 

She  flies  to  her  dressing-room  and  attempts  to  swallow 
poison.  Astier's  secretary  rushes  after  her.  While  he  is 
wrenching  the  poison  away,  the  report  of  fire-arms.  Both 
rush  back  to  the  library,  where  they  find  M.  Astier  bathed 
in  blood,  dying.  The  wife,  before  she  can  be  hindered, 
puts  the  smoking  pistol  to  her  head,  fires  another  fatal 
shot,  and  the  tragedy  is  done. 

Gano  had  talked  to  Driscoll  from  time  to  time  of  the 
Astiers,  of  Clemenceau,  and  the  other  habitues  of  those 
delightful  soirees,  and  of  the  regret  he  sometimes  felt  that 
he  had  not  told  his  friends  frankly  of  the  change  in  his 
fortunes,  and  the  reason  he  did  not  any  longer  frequent 
the  Faubourg  St.  Honore. 

"But  I  couldn't,  somehow,  talk  to  them  of  a  thing 
we  couldn't  either  laugh  at  or  satirize.  Still,  they'd  be 
among  the  first  people  that  I'd  go  to  if  I  had  a  stroke  of 
luck.'' 

And  now,  out  of  that  atmosphere  of  gayety  and  Hague, 
this  !  No  sky  apparently  so  cloudless  but  from  its  blue 
a  bolt  may  fall.  Ethan  had  rushed  out  and  bought  the 
Justice.  He  read  Clemenceau's  article  aloud,  translating 
hurriedly  as  he  went  on  for  a  compatriot  of  Driscoll's,  who 
had  happened  to  drop  in  for  a  pipe  and  a  crack  : 

"'This  pitiless  scoffer,  Astier,  this  despairing  sceptic, 
who  spoke  so  slightingly  of  women  and  love,  is  now  dis 
covered  to  have  been  a  man  of  soft  and  sentimental  nature, 
without  any  reserve  of  appliances  against  woman's  wiles  or 

211 


THE    Ol'KX    QUESTION 

surging  passion.  The  so-called  libertine,  cauterized  by 
Paris  against  Paris,  was  upset  by  an  event  which  could 
have  been  easily  foreseen.  In  a  situation  of  the  most 
commonplace  kind,  he  so  thoroughly  lost  all  self-control 
that  he  could  hit  upon  no  other  remedy  than  self-destruc 
tion/  How  contemptuously  he  writes  of  his  old  friend's 
'losing  self-control'  and  the  rest  of  it,"  said  Gano,  angrily, 
"as  if  the  double  death  was  the  real  tragedy  !" 

"  What  then  ?" 

"Why,  the  moment  when  that  nice  woman  discovered 
that  the  husband  she  had  married  so  romantically,  and 
who  had  been  so  devoted  to  her  all  those  years,  had 
turned  round  and  betrayed  her  in  the  last  chapter.  I 
agree  with  them  both  :  it  wasn't  much  use  to  go  on  living 
after  that." 

"Oh,  as  to  going  on  living,"  observed  Driscoll,  shortly, 
"  it  would  puzzle  most  people  to  tell  why  they  think  that 
much  use." 

"  But  these  people—"  began  Gano. 

"  More  like  the  rest  of  the  world  than  they  pretended, 
that's  all,"  the  visitor  summed  up,  as  he  knocked  the  ashes 
out  of  his  pipe.  "I've  once  or  twice  come  near  to  some 
tragedy,  as  Gano  has  to  this.  It  does  feel  a  bit  odd  to 
realize  we're  all  living  our  peaceful  lives  on  the  edge  of  a 
volcano.  But,  bless  you  !" — he  clapped  on  his  hat  with  a 
rakish  air — "  we  get  so  used  to  it  we  forget  all  about  it  till 
our  turn  comes." 

"  Meanwhile,  we're  all  in  the  conspiracy  to  pretend  that 
tragedy  is  dead  and  buried  in  the  works  of  the  great  dram 
atists,"  said  Driscoll. 

"Good  job,  too,"  commented  the  departing  visitor,  nod 
ding  to  the  two  friends  as  he  went  off. 

"Your  cheerful  compatriot  is  right,"  said  Ethan,  shaken 
suddenly  out  of  his  role  as  Nature's  apologist.  "  Life  sim 
ply  doesn't  bear  being  thought  about." 

Whereupon  they  proceeded  to  talk  about  it  for  hours  on 
end.  They  uttered  a  deal  of  raw  philosophy  in  those  days, 
often  with  passion,  sometimes  with  hope.  Driscoll,  for  all 

212 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

his  profession  of  pessimism,  had  moments  of  splendid  con 
fidence  that  he  had  stumbled  upon  the  Perfect  Way.  Gano 
would  shake  his  head,  repeating  : 

'"Myself,  when  young,  did  eagerly  frequent 
Doctor  and  saint,  and  heard  great  argument 
About  it  and  about  :   but  evermore 
Came  out  by  the  same  door  as  in  I  went. 

'"  .  .  .  Their  words  to  scorn 
Are  scattered,  and  their  mouths  are  stopped  with  dust.'" 

Through  a  young  painter  from  Basle,  these  two  were 
among  the  first  outside  of  the  German  circle  to  have  some 
realization  of  the  magnitude  of  Friedrich  Nietzsche  as  a 
force  to  be  reckoned  with.  But  Gano  shrank  from  the 
sound  and  fury  of  the  iconoclast  as  much  as  from  his  more 
coherently  expressed  doctrines.  It  was  as  abhorrent  to 
his  new  doubts  as  it  was  to  his  old  faiths  to  hear  that 
Nietzsche  had  said  (speaking  of  Germany),  "  Nowhere  else 
has  there  been  so  vicious  a  misuse  of  the  two  great  European 
narcotics — alcohol  and  Christianity."  Driscoll,  knowing  a 
good  deal  more  about  the  first  than  he  did  about  the  last, 
professed  his  withers  to  be  unwrung.  What  was  there  in 
the  utterance  that  Gano  should  gibe  at  ? 

Almost  from  the  beginning  they  wore  their  rue  with  a 
difference.  Driscoll  raged  at  concrete  mistakes  and  in 
justices  in  the  scheme  of  things  as  presented  to  Richard 
Driscoll.  The  other,  seeming  to  think  he  had  fewer  per 
sonal  wrongs  to  complain  of,  capable  of  too  keen  a  self- 
criticism  to  imagine  himself  a  genius  to  whom  the  world 
owed  special  privileges,  was  coming  rapidly  to  a  more  seri 
ous  indictment  of  life  on  the  basis  of  "the  dread  irration 
ality  of  the  whole  affair." 

It  is  not  a  happy  subject  for  contemplation,  perhaps,  but 
it  is  possible  to  ignore  too  absolutely  that  this  is  the  atti 
tude  of  mind  of  a  vast  number  of  the  young, people  of  the 
time.  No  one  with  his  classics  in  his  mind,  no  one  even 
who  has  not  forgotten  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare,  thinks 

213 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

that  this  desperate  guessing  at  "the  riddle  of  the  painful 
earth  "  is  an  exercise  peculiar  to  our  day.  What  is  perhaps 
new  is  the  commonness  of  the  interrogation  among  young 
men,  rich  and  poor,  industrious  and  idle,  who  have  not 
genius  wherewith  to  clothe  and  deck  their  failure  to  pro 
duce  the  answer.  Such  men  have  not  the  distractions 
and  rewards  of  genius  to  take  their  minds  off  the  fact  of 
failure. 

What  does  it  matter  if  you,  in  common  with  all  the 
laboring  earth,  are  feeling  in  every  fibre  the  force  of  the 
Duke's  bitter  exhortation  to  Claudio  ?  what  does  it  matter 
if  you  can  turn  life's  discords  into  music  such  as  this  ? 
Even  a  less  lofty  strain  is  reward  sufficient  for  the  singer, 
reason  enough  to  reconcile  the  monstrous  egoism  of 
genius  to  the  presence  in  the  world  of  great  sorrows  that 
can  be  transmuted  into  little  songs.  But  to  those  whose 
music  is  shut  up  within  them  all  their  days,  what  shall 
help  them  bear  the  deafening  discord  of  the  jangling  on 
and  on  of  things  that  hurries  them  towards  silence  ?  There 
is  an  answer  to  this  question,  but  it  is  not  found  among 
those  usually  given,  which  are  for  the  most  part  variations 
of  the  philosophy  of  the  ostrich. 

Gano  used  to  tell,  laughing,  of  the  way  a  great  English 
lady  met  her  son's  shrinking  confession  of  some  deep,  in 
tellectual  difficulty:  "Do  rouse  yourself,  St.  John.  Low 
spirits  are  such  bad  form." 

"What  was  cultivated  society  ?"  Gano  demanded  of  the 
Irishman.  "A  device  for  preventing  people  from  serious 
thinking.  Acceptance  of  this  view  was  implicit  in  the 
very  roots  of  language.  You  had  to  'divert,'  to  '  distract7 
a  man  from  the  peril  of  looking  facts  in  the  face  before 
you  could  expect  him  to  be  moderately  happy.  Games  for 
grown-up  children,  the  puerilities  of  country-house  parties, 
what  are  they  ?  Sage  devices  for  preventing  people  from 
thinking,  traps  to  snare  and  cage  the  intelligence — civiliza 
tion's  harmless  anaesthetics.  Oh  yes,  no  mistake  about 
our  diversions  being  more  wisely  chosen  in  these  'scien 
tific'  times  than  in  the  days  when  the  one  escape  was  into 

"  214 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

the  wine-cup's  cul-de-sac.  What  were  they  all — drinking, 
opium-eating,  and  the  rest — but  simply  forms  of  that  pro 
test  most  thinking  creatures  find  themselves  making  at 
some  stage  of  their  too-conscious  life  ?" 

Driscoll  accepted  this  view  of  his  excesses  with  equa 
nimity,  reminding  Ethan  in  turn  that  there  are  in  all  ages 
bystanders  at  the  board  while  the  cup  goes  round — old 
ladies  of  both  sexes  ready  to  ask,  "  What  pleasure  can  men 
take  in  making  beasts  of  themselves  ?"  and  there  is  not 
always  a  philosopher  at  the  objector's  elbow  to  answer, 
'•  He,  madam,  who  makes  a  beast  of  himself  gets  rid  of  the 
pain  of  being  a  man."  The  great  moralist  knew  from  per 
sonal  experience  what  he  was  talking  about.  He  had  the 
sincerity  to  admit  that  his  own  long-abandoned  drinking 
had  not  at  any  time  been  from  love  of  good-fellowship. 
Away  with  the  genial  lie,  "I  drank  to  be  rid  of  myself  I" 

But  Gano's  point  was  that  these  old  childish  ways  of 
hiding  the  head  under  the  bedclothes  to  keep  out  of  the 
dark  no  longer  comfort  so  many  of  the  grown-up  children 
of  the  world.  "They  are  afraid,"  he  said,  "not  only  of 
the  night,  but,  with  a  surer  wisdom,  of  the  morning.  It 
is  not  so  easy  to  keep  to-morrow  at  bay.  Men  need  less 
and  less  the  warning  of  the  taverner's  wife  :  '  They  one 
and  all  regret  it  in  the  morning.7 '' 

Said  Gano  to  himself,  summing  up  his  survey  :  "  We 
should  not  depend  on,  but  keep  in  reserve,  some  draught 
with  no  such  menace  in  the  dregs.  What  one  surer  than 
that  which  brings  a  good-night  and  no  morrow  at  all  for 
ever  any  more  ?" 

Not,  he  felt,  as  a  result  of  his  own  hard  knocks,  but  out 
of  unbiassed  observation  of  the  common  lot,  again  and 
again,  without 'personal  resentment  and  without  passion, 
he  found  himself  reverting  to  the  thought  of  the  unliva- 
blenessof  life,  unless  a  man  should  carry  about  a  conviction 
of  freedom  in  his  soul — a  freedom  that  should  be  not  a 
phrase  but  a  potent  fact,  conferring  sovereignty  over  life 
and  death,  and  so  lifting  men  above  the  meaner  tricks  of 
chance. 

215 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

If  solving  the  riddle  in  "high  Roman  fashion"  did  not 
"  make  Death  proud  to  take  us,"  which  he  felt  to  be  be 
side  the  mark,  the  more  intimate  realization  that  escape 
is  possible  seemed  to  rob  life  of  her  more  intolerable 
menace.  It  was  not  food  for  fear  or  brooding,  but  for 
exultation,  this  recognition  that,  should  other  remedies 
lail,  one  might  still  do 

"That  tiling  that  ends  all  other  deeds, 
That  shackles  accidents,  and  bolts  up  change." 

If  the  sovereign  remedy  had  not  been  discovered  in  the 
past,  the  Nineteenth  Century  would  have  invented  it. 
Never  before  had  life  been  so  hard  for  the  many,  never 
before  had  its  value  been  so  impugned.  It  might  be  true 
that  every  one  should  make  a  good  fight.  It  could  not  be 
recommended  to  any  but  the  craven  that  he  should  accept 
a  degrading  captivity  in  addition  to  defeat.  Yet  those 
were  the  terms  upon  which  more  than  half  the  world  lived. 
As  for  himself,  it  grew  plainer  and  plainer  that  he  should 
bear  as  many  buffets  as  he  could  take  like  a  man.  but  no 
one  had  a  right  to  ask  him  to  accept  the  disgraceful  terms 
on  which  many  of  the  excellent  of  earth  were  given  their 
dole  of  bitter  bread.  As  for  the  women,  the  power  of 
human  endurance  was  in  them  not  glorified,  as  the  foolish 
had  thought,  but  debased,  brutalized,  a  thing  for  scorn  and 
pointing.  It  was  this  side  of  the  subject  that  ultimately 
roused  him  out  of  the  apathy  tiiat  had  threatened  him. 
He  had  the  sense  of  being  secretly  a  lantern-bearer,  of 
carrying  under  his  coat  a  wonderful  sort  of  Aladdin's  lamp, 
and  feeling  it  a  selfish  monopoly  not  to  cry  out  his  dis 
covery  in  the  streets.  For  this  light,  that  had  been  so 
gallantly  upborne,  so  well  honored,  of  old,  had  been  put 
out  in  the  more  effeminate  times,  and  fallen  to  utter  dis 
credit  in  these  new  "dark  ages."  It  was  degraded  to  the 
uses  of  the  vile,  instead  of  shining  beacon-like  upon  the 
hill  of  honor,  a  guide  less  to  the  fallen  than  to  those  who 
would  keep  from  falling.  Men  had  so  many  new  inven 
tions  to  make,  they  had  clean  forgotten  this.  It  was  one 

216 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

of  the  lost  arts,  and  had  need  of  rediscovery  and  new  pro 
claiming  with  the  accent  of  our  time.  A  strange  ardor 
of  proselytism  fell  upon  him  as  he  looked  upon  those  about 
him  in  whom  he  traced  his  own  old  fear  of  life  :  delicate 
women  toiling  in  terror  and  incommunicable  agony  of 
spirit,  or  those  others,  more  horrible  still,  accepting  dully, 
or  in  the  devil-may-care  French  fashion,  an  existence  in 
credibly  vile.  Why  were  they  not  told 

"  Ye  have  no  friend, 
But  resolution  and  the  briefest  end." 

It  would  be  absurd  to  say  not  one  would  listen.  He 
couldn't  take  up  a  paper  without  seeing  that  some  des 
perate  soul  had  made  the  discovery  alone,  unprompted, 
and  with  all  the  weight  of  Society,  Law,  the  Church,  and 
ignorant  human  shrinking  against  the  anarchy  of  the  act. 
It  should  be  made  less  horribly  hard,  more  admittedly 
honorable.  Illogically  enough,  perhaps,  these  were  not 
thoughts  he  felt  it  possible  to  share  with  a  man  in  Dris- 
coll's  state  of  rapidly  failing  health.  Gano  would  drop 
any  questions  in  their  later  discussions  that  tended  too 
much  that  way,  and  the  conversation  showed  in  this  a 
curious  alacrity.  If  Driscoll  pursued  the  matter,  Gano 
would  even  go  the  length  of  cutting  the  interview  short. 
The  intellectual  barrier  thus  raised  was  the  first  check  to 
the  deepening  friendship.  For  himself,  from  the  day  that 
Gano  realized  that  life  was  voluntary,  it  became  sweet.  He 
found  himself  growing  more  light-hearted  than  he  had 
thought  it  lay  in  him  to  be.  He. worked  with  a  new  zest. 
Poverty,  hunger,  they  couldn't  cow  him  now.  He  had  the 
whip-hand  of  them.  "I  haven't  forgotten,"  he  said  to 
himself,  "  what  it's  like  to  be  well  housed,  and  fed,  and 
friended,  and  to  listen  without  misgiving  to  the  world's 
fairy-tales  ;  but,  remembering  the  gladdest  day  the  old  life 
had  to  give,  I  know  it  never  brought  me  such  a  surging, 
God-like  joy  as  the  burst  of  that  revelation,  We  are  free! 
If  we  endure  the  worst  evils  in  this  life,  it  is  because  we 
are  willing  to.  Even  the  meanest  of  mankind  are  not 

217 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

caught  like  vermin  in  a  trap.  Man's  best  boast  and  ina 
lienable  patent  of  nobility  is  that  he  holds  in  his  hand  a 
key  to  all  the  prisons  of  the  earth.  He  may  open  the 
door  of  escape  for  himself.  How  curious  to  feel  anew  the 
solace  of  the  old  Roman  boast :  In  this  the  gods  are  less 
to  be  envied  than  the  beggar  or  the  slave ;  the  high  gods 
must  live  on,  but  man  may  die  if  he  will.  Oh,  glad  tidings 
of  great  joy !  oh,  the  sweet,  fresh  air  of  liberty,  the  sense 
of  power,  the  exaltation  of  the  crushed  and  stifled  spirit ! 
In  his  bare,  ill-lighted  room  the  man  who  had  so  long  been 
ths  spoiled  favorite  of  material  good  fortune,  now  with 
empty  pockets,  dinnerless,  nearly  friendless,  would,  never 
theless,  lift  up  hopeful  young  hands  in  a  defiant  gladness, 
whispering  to  himself:  "They  taught  me  many  things  in 
many  schools  for  many  years,  but  no  man  ever  whispered  I 
was  free  !  I  had  to  find  that  out  for  myself." 

In  these  latter  days,  when  he  went  up-stairs  to  sit  with 
Priscoll,  he  sometimes  found  a  woman  moving  quietly 
about  the  room.  When  she  had  gone,  there  was  always 
something  there  for  the  invalid's  supper,  and  Gano  would 
suppress  the  fact  that  he  had  brought  a  double  provision 
in  his  pocket  for  an  impromptu  meal. 

The  woman  wore  one  of  those  feature-destroying  veils 
that  made  it  impossible  to  judge  much  of  her  appearance, 
but  Gano  had  a  vague  impression  of  slim  middle  age  and 
unimpressive  looks,  soft  ways,  and  a  sort  of  "mother-ten 
derness*'  about  her.  But  she  was  so  colorless,  so  much 
more  an  influence  than  a  person,  that  he  did  not  realize  he 
had  never  heard,  or  at  least  never  noticed,  her  voice,  till 
one  evening  she  said  Bony  soir  in  an  amazing  accent. 

"  English  !"  commented  Ethan,  involuntarily,  as  the  door 
closed. 

"Australian,"  corrected  the  sick  man. 

"'She's  rather  neglected  you  lately,"  remarked  Gano,  as 
a  kind  of  apology  for  the  unmistakable  bulginess  of  his 
pockets. 

Ho  unloaded  on  the  ricket    table. 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  I  say,  why  do  you  bring  all  that  truck  in  here  ?" 
Driscoll  demanded,  ungraciously. 

"  You  keep  quiet !  You've  got  to  have  somebody  to  do 
your  marketing  for  you,,  I  suppose.  I  thought  your  Aus 
tralian  friend  had  thrown  up  the  post." 

"So  she  had,"  grumbled  the  invalid.  "Women  are 
damned  selfish.''' 

"Well,  they  repent  sometimes;  there's  that  in  their 
favor." 

Gano  set  about  making  coffee. 

"She  didn't  repent,"  mumbled  Driscoll. 

"  Oh,  is  this  the  last  of  her  ?" 

"No;  I  only  meant  I  had  to  send  for  her."  And  then 
they  talked  of  other  things. 

The  next  time  Gano  saw  the  woman  was  after  Driscoll 
got  worse.  He  went  up  one  night,  and  found  him  pallid, 
speechless,  wrestling  with  one  of  his  worst  attacks  of  pain. 
The  woman  was  bending  over  him. 

"  Please  go  and  get  that  filled."  She  held  out  an  empty 
bottle,  hardly  looking  at  Gano. 

He  hurried  obediently  down-stairs.  Behind  his  anxiety 
for  the  man  he  had  come  to  feel  so  much  liking  for,  was  a 
sense  of  surprise  that  the  Australian  was  not  so  middle 
aged  as  he  had  thought.  "She's  not  thirty -five,"  he  specu 
lated  in  between  his  wondering  how  Driscoll  could  get  on 
without  a  night-nurse;  "and  she's  not  bad  looking."  He 
was  back  again,  two  steps  at  a  time,  with  the  medicine. 
Driscoll  was  quieter.  The  woman  motioned  the  bottle 
away.  She  was  taking  his  temperature. 

"Hospital  nurse,"  was  Gano's  mental  comment  upon 
the  air  of  usage  and  competence.  He  sat  there  awhile, 
and  then  whispered  : 

"I'm  in  the  room  on  the  left  at  the  bottom  of  the  first 
flight,  if  you  want  me." 

She  nodded,  and  he  went  down  to  his  work. 

When  he  looked  up  from  his  writing  it  was  a  quarter  to 
one.  Had  the  woman  gone  and  he  not  heard  her  pass  ? 
How  was  Driscoll  ?  It  was  awfully  quiet  overhead.  With 

219 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

a  tightening'  of  the  nerves  he  took  his  lamp  and  hurried 
up-stairs.  He  knocked  softly.  No  answer.  Noiselessly, 
so  that  the  invalid  should  not  be  wakened,  if  indeed  he 
were  not  ...  lie  opened  the  door.  Driscoll  was  asleep, 
and  breathing  audibly.  The  woman  was  asleep  too,  sitting 
on  the  floor,  her  head  leaning  against  the  side  of  the  bed, 
Driscoll's  hand  in  one  of  hers.  She  looked  still  younger 
in  the  peace  of  sleep,  though  obviously  older  than  Driscoll, 
softened  out  of  her  customary  wooden  immobility.  Guno 
felt  that  he  was  seeing  her  real  face  for  the  first  time  : 
the  mask  had  fallen.  She  could  never  have  been  pretty, 
but  there  was  something  in  her  face  of  nobility  that  pre 
vented  a  man  from  coming  to  an  easy  conclusion  about 
her.  Her  black  hair  was  sharply  silhouetted  against  the 
white  sheet.  The  hand  that  held  DriscolPs  wore  a  plain 
gold  marriage-ring.  She  seemed  to  feel  the  light  or  the 
scrutiny  of  a  strange  glance,  for  she  stirred  and  opened 
her  gray  eyes.  Gano  was  momentarily  embarrassed — she 
not  in  the  least.  She  turned  quickly  to  look  at  the 
sleeper. 

"Wait!"  she  whispered,  as  Gano  seemed  to  be  turning 
away. 

She  put  her  finger  on  the  sick  man's  pulse,  and,  still 
kneeling  there,  counted  the  beats  with  absorbed,  unself- 
conscious  face.  Gano  was  struck  again  with  the  "moth 
er"  quality  in  the  woman.  I  gave  all  she  did  a  definite 
modesty.  She  was  getting  up. 

"Can  you  spare  the  light?"  she  whispered.  "I  forgot 
to  bring — 

"  Of  course/'  interrupted  Guno. 

He  set  the  lamp  down,  and  turned  to  the  door. 

"  Wait  a  moment." 

She  hung  the  Figaro  over  the  back  of  the  chair  between 
the  sleeper  and  the  light,  then,  quietly  and  without  haste, 
she  took  her  brown  cape  and  hat  off  the  peg  and  put  them 
on.  She  leaned  a  moment  over  the  sleeper,  and  then, 
"Come!"  she  signed  rather  then  said,  and  they  went 
softly  out.  At  the  foot  of  the  stairs  she  stopped. 

220 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  Can  you  get  a  candle  and  a  piece  of  paper  ?" 

"Yes  ;  this  is  my  room/'  said  Gano.  opening  his  door. 

The  moonlight  came  palely  in  at  the  single  window. 
Without  hesitation  she  had  followed  him.  He  lit  the 
candle  by  his  bed. 

"  I  want  to  leave  you  my  address/'  she  said.  "  I  think 
he'll  be  all  right  now,  but  if  he  should  be  worse  don't  leave 
him  ;  send  some  one  to  this  address — send  a,  fiacre." 

She  scribbled  on  the  piece  of  paper,  and  laid  it  by  the 
candle. 

"Do  you  think  I  ought  to  sit  up  with  him  ?"  Gano  asked, 
watching  her  intently. 

"No  need  to  sit  up;  you  can  sleep  on  the  sofa,  can't 
you,  or — " 

"  Or  on  the  floor  ?"  he  asked,  smiling  a  little  at  her  mat- 
ter-of-factness. 

"  Or  on  the  floor,"  she  repeated  quietly.     "  Good-night." 

She  went  out. 

"  Sha'n't  I  get  you  a  cab  ?" 

"No  ;  I  shall  walk.     Good-night ;"  and  she  was  gone. 

On  the  paper  was  written  : 

"  Mrs.  Mary  Burne, 

21  Hue  Blanche." 


CHAPTER  XVI 

DRISCOLL  was  better  next  morning,  and  able  to  eat  break 
fast.  Gano  had  got  into  the  habit  of  making  coffee  in  the 
invalid's  room  in  the  morning  as  well  as  i\t  night.  Dris- 
coll  had  waked  with  an  appetite. 

"  Ha !  cream  !     Did  Mary  bring  that  ?" 

"  Mary  ?" 

"Yes;  Mrs.  Burne." 
'  No  ;  I  got  it.     I  thought  we  deserved  cream  to-day." 

"  How  long  was  Mary  here  ?" 

"Oh,  pretty  late,  I  should  say." 

"  H'm  !  That  woman's  had  a  damned  hard  time,"  Dris- 
coll  said,  ruminating  between  his  sips  of  coffee ;  "  does 
those  colored  things  for  the  Semaine  Illustree.  She's  drawn 
ever  since  she  was  a  baby.  Never  had  a  lesson  in  her  life 
till  two  years  ago.  I  met  her  at  Julien's.  She  was  work 
ing  like  the  devil." 

"  Making  up  for  lost  time  ?" 

"Yes,  poor  girl  !  Married  a  brute  of  a  Melbourne  ship 
builder  when  she  was  seventeen.  Stood  him  till  three  years 
ago,  and  then— Lord  !  the  audacity  of  these  women — came 
to  Paris  to  study  art,  if  you  please.  Thirty,  and  never  had 
a  lesson  in  her  life  !" 

He  laughed,  and  held  out  his  coffee-cup. 

"  Ship-builder  dead  ?"  asked  Gano,  filling  it  up. 

"  Dead  !  No  !  alive  and  kicking,  or  I'd  have  made  her 
marry  me." 

"Lord  !  the  audacity  of  these  men,"  laughed  his  friend. 

When  Driscoll  got  definitely  worse,  Mrs.  Burne  stayed 
with  him  through  the  day,  and  Gano  sat  up  with  him  at 


night. 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"If  you  can  do  it,  it's  best  so,"  she  said,  simply. 

"  Of  course — of  course,"  agreed  Gano,  hastily,  his  Puritan 
mind  involuntarily  considering  the  proprieties,  even  in  these 
haunts. 

"  You  see,  while  you  sleep  I  can  look  after  him,  and  do 
my  work  too  if  I  have  daylight.  You  can  write  by  lamp 
light." 

And  the  practical  sense  of  the  arrangement  shamed  his 
first  interpretation  of  her  plan.  He  found  himself  during 
their  brief  meetings,  morning  and  evening,  watching  the 
woman  with  a  deepened  interest. 

"Am  /in  love  with  her,  too  ?"  he  wondered,  as  he  caught 
himself  following  with  something  like  envy  her  ministering 
to  his  friend. 

But  all  she  did  was  strangely  lacking  in  any  hint  of  the 
supposed  relation  between  Driscoll  and  herself.  There  was 
infinite  gentleness  in  her,  but  no  happy  confusion.  Gano 
never  saw  in  her  quiet  eyes  that  look  he  was  always  dread 
ing  to  surprise. 

"She  doesn't  care  about  him  in  the  way  he  thinks,  poor 
devil  !"  he  said,  at  last,  to  himself. 

The  only  time  he  ever  ventured  to  speak  of  her  goodness 
to  the  sick  man,  "  Oh,  Mr.  Driscoll  has  been  kind  to  me," 
she  said.  "  lie  got  me  my  place  on  the  Sernaine  Illustree." 

Why,  it  was  a  sheer  case  of  extravagant  gratitude  !  Gano 
was  conscious  this  explanation  pleased  him. 

"  How's  the  club  getting  on  ?"  Driscoll  asked  her  one 
evening,  as  she  was  leaving. 

Gano  was  spreading  out  his  writing  materials  on  the 
rickety  table. 

"  Oh,  all  right,"  she  said,  pinning  her  brown  hat  firmly 
on  her  coil  of  black  hair. 

"You  haven't  had  the  honor  of  being  admitted  to  the 
club,"  said  Driscoll,  laughing  and  nodding  over  at  Gano. 
"You  aren't  considered  worthy." 

"You  weren't  considered  worthy,"  said  Mrs.  Burne,  smil 
ing  faintly,  "but  you  would  come." 

228 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"And  if  I  adopted  the  same  tactics,"  suggested  Gano. 

" No,  no,"  she  said,  hastily ;  "it's  really  only  for  women." 

She  hunted  about  for  her  gloves.  It  was  the  first  time 
Gano  had  ever  seen  a  look  of  embarrassment  on  the  calm 
face. 

"  What  kind  of  a  club  ?"  he  asked. 

"  A — debating  club,"  she  answered.     "  Good-night." 

"Ha,  ha,  ha  !     I  like  that." 

But  she  was  gone  with  a  look  of  pleading  cast  on  Dris- 
coll  as  she  went — a  look  that  was  like  a  prayer. 

Gano  felt  absurdly  piqued  to  know  more,  not  of  the  fool 
ish  club,  but  of  this  fellow-being. 

"You  say  you've  been  ?" 

lie  fitted  a  new  pen  in  the  holder. 

"Oh  yes  ;  but  they  didn't  do  anything  very  remarkable 
the  night  I  was  there.  They  meet  in  Mary's  lodging. 
There  were  only  three  then.  She  says  there  are  sixteen 
now,  two  or  three  of  'em  men,  in  spite  of  it's  being  'only 
for  women.'  Can't  think  where  she  puts  'em." 

"What  did  they  debate  ?" 

"  Oh,  some  rot  about  social  duties.  They  really  go  to 
sit  by  a  fire  and  get  a  cup  of  hot  tea.  But  it's  a  very  good 
thing,"  he  added,  with  a  sudden  rush  of  loyalty.  "It's 
grown  out  of  Mary's  keeping  one  or  two  women  from 
going  the  primrose  path  to  the  everlasting  bonfire." 

His  desire  to  "guy"  the  club  seemed  to  have  gone  out 
with  the  founder's  going.  The  same  thing  has  happened 
before. 

"  Lots  of  English  and  Americans  let  loose  here,  you 
know,  without  a  notion — 

lie  made  an  expressive  movement  of  his  big  hands. 

"  I  see.     The  club's  a  rescue  party." 

"  Something  of  the  sort.    She  doesn't  say  much  about  it." 

"Funny  place,  Paris." 

"Yes;  all  kinds  here." 

Gano  knew  to  the  hour  when  the  tide  of  his  ill-luck  and 
apathy  had  changed.  His  new  interest  in  Mary  Burne  did 

224 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

not  blind  him  to  the  fact  that  life  had  suddenly  grown  en 
durable,  even  attractive,  decent  in  his  eyes,  from  the  mo 
ment  he  had  fully  realized  and  fully  accepted  the  fact  that 
he  was  under  no  nightmare  of  obligation  to  go  on  with  it. 
It  was  as  if  the  noisome  prison-house  of  his  soul  were 
flung  open  once  and  forever  to  the  blessed  life-giving  air. 
No  more  misgiving,  no  more  shrinking  from  the  deep 
insecurity  of  things.  He  began  to  write  with  a  new  vigor 
and  resiliency.  There  came  into  his  work  not  only  buoy 
ancy,  but  a  fine  temper  it  had  lacked  before.  The  love  of 
literature  took  hold  on  him  again  as  it  had  done  in  those 
first  years  of  awakening  abroad.  He  came  to  care  again 
about  his  own  little  performances,  and  by  degrees  did  more 
and  more  work  for  the  paper.  The  editor  had  several 
times  complimented  him  warmly.  Presently  he  was  offered 
a  regular  position  on  the  staff.  He  paid  back  Henri  de 
Poincy  in  full,  and  would  have  moved  into  better  quarters 
but  for — but  for — Driscoll,  he  would  have  said.  Driscoll 
was  still  very  ill — worse,  indeed,  than  ever. 

"  Never  could  do  anything  well  in  a  hurry,"  he  repeated 
his  dreary  old  quip.  "Have  patience,  and  I'll  make  a 
thorough  job  of  this." 

Gano  felt  more  and  more  that  whatever  had  been  their 
relation  in  the  past,  Mary  Burne  was  absorbed  now,  not  by 
Driscoll,  but  by  Driscoll's  illness  and  dire  need  of  her  min 
istry.  If  she  had  not  exactly  encouraged,  she  certainly 
had  not  repelled,  Gano's  growing  devotion.  Her  demeanor 
was  perfect,  he  said  to  himself.  How  could  she  give  her 
new  lover  a  sign  by  the  death-bed  of  the  man  who  had 
adored  her  for  years,  who  had  befriended  her,  and  who  was 
in  such  need  himself  of  befriending  ?  Gano  schooled  him 
self  to  keep  the  growing  assurance  and  victory  out  of  his 
face  and  manner.  He  would  follow  Mary's  lead,  and  when 
in  the  gray  unpromising  life  of  the  sick-room  they  found 
some  dumb  way  of  communicating,  some  unasked  aid  to 
give,  some  slight  unnoticed  contact  in  the  common  service 
rendered,  Gano  would  school  his  thrilling  nerves  to  keep 
the  secret  of  his  gladness  as  calmly  as  Mary  Burne  kept  hers, 
p  225 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

As  he  grew  worse,  Driscoll  grew  more  exacting,  and  more 
variable  in  temper.  He  had  less  and  less  compassion  on  his 
friends,  and  demanded  Herculean  labors  of  wakefulness — 
watching,  reading  aloud,  etc.  No  invalid  had  ever  a  more 
comfortable  confidence  in  the  boundless  strength  and  amia 
bility  of  those  who  are  well.  Gano  tried  with  scant  success  to 
save  Mary  from  bearing  the  brunt  of  the  sick  man's  exactions. 

He  hurried  up-stairs  to  relieve  the  watch  a  little  earlier 
than  usual  one  evening. 

"  Once  more  I  appeal  to  yon,"  he  heard  Driscoll  saying, 
with  raised  voice,  before  the  door  was  opened.  The  turn 
ing  of  the  knob  had  either  drowned  or  prevented  the  reply. 
Driscoll  lay  breathing  heavily,  and  Mary,  with  impassive 
face,  was  drawing  on  her  gloves.  She  looked  up  and  nodded 
to  Gano. 

4i  Good-bye,"  she  said,  after  a  moment.  But  on  the 
threshold  she  stopped.  "Dick,"  she  said,  without  turn 
ing  to  face  Driscoll,  "  I  think  I  won't  come  to-morrow." 

"  Yes,  you  will,"  he  shouted.  She  turned  and  looked  at 
him. 

"  Good-bye,"  was  all  she  said. 

"  Damned  selfish  women  are  !"  Driscoll  growled  as  the 
sound  of  her  steps  died. 

"  I  shouldn't  call  her  exactly  a  case  in  point/"  observed 
his  friend. 

"  Well,  she  is.  She  sees  how  hopeless  this  is,  and  how 
damnably  I'm  suffering,  and  she  won't  help  me  to  get  out 
of  this  cursed  hole.  You  won't  either,"  he  added,  defiant 
ly,  and  yet  with  a  gleam  of  hope,  almost  lunatic  in  its  cun 
ning  and  its  greed. 

"  I  won't  what  ?"  said  Gano. 

"  Get  me  some  morphine,  or  fetch  me  a  pistol,  or  light 
some  charcoal." 

"  Lord,  no  !     You'll  be  better  yet,  old  man." 

"  Rot !  and  you  know  it ;  and  so  does  she.  But  she  pre 
tends  to  care,  and  yet  she  won't  help  me.  Damned  selfish 
— damned  selfish  !"  lie  turned  over  in  bed,  and  went  on 
cursing  under  the  bedclothes. 

226 


THE    OTEN    QUESTION 

Gano  wondered  how  long  the  idea  had  been  in  his  head, 
and  how  long  Driscoll  had  worn  a  beard,  and  whether  there 
was  a  razor  in  the  dressing-case.  He  shuddered  as  he 
glanced  surreptitiously  about.  Wasn't  it  a  little  odd  that 
he  should  find  the  notion  so  ghastly  ?  Ah  yes,  the  ugly 
violence  of  it  !  When  the  sick  man  got  to  sleep  his  friend 
rummaged  his  room  from  end  to  end,  finding  nothing 
to  confiscate ;  and,  after  all,  Driscoll  had  a  fair  night.  The 
morning  was  gray.  A  fine  drizzle  shot  spitefully  down  out 
of  a  leaden  sky.  Mary  did  not  appear  at  the  usual  hour. 
Towards  noon.  Gano  went  down  to  his  own  room,  worn  out, 
and  flung  himself  on  his  bed  without  undressing.  He  was 
waked  by  the  noise  of  a  dull  fall  overhead.  He  sprang  up 
in  a  horror  of  apprehension,  broad  awake  on  the  instant. 
He  rushed  up-stairs  and  burst  in  on  Driscoll,  to  find  him 
angrily  pushing  books  off  the  table  on  to  the  floor,  as  a 
summons  to  his  friend  below. 

"You  sleep  like  the  dead/'  was  his  greeting.  "  Where's 
Mary  ?" 

"Great  Caesar!     I  don't  know." 

"  My  watch  has  run  down,"  Driscoll  went  on,  querulously. 

Gano  set  it  by  his.     It  was  five  o'clock. 

"  Don't  go  to  sleep  again  ;  let's  have  some  coffee." 

"  All  right,"  answered  Gano,  yawning.  "  I  believe  I'm 
hungry.  Til  go  and  forage." 

When  he  came  back  with  the  provisions  he  brought  up 
some  letters  and  papers.  He  tumbled  everything  down  on 
the  table.  There  was  nothing  for  him  but  some  proof  from 
the  office,  and  two  letters  from  America,  sent  on  by  Mon 
roe  &  Co. 

"Birthday  greetings  from  New  Plymouth,"  he  said  to 
himself,  as  he  recognized  the  familiar  old-fashioned  hand, 
the  violet  ink,  and  the  brown  five-cent  stamp  that  had 
grown  to  seem  foreign  to  him.  He  hadn't  the  curiosity  to 
read  birthday  commonplaces  till  the  impromptu  meal  was 
finished,  and  Driscoll  had  become  a  bore,  asking  him  to 
look  out  and  see  if  Mary  wasn't  coming,  the  only  variation 
being,  "  Hark  !  isn't  she  on  the  stairs?" 

227 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

It  was  only  then  that,  turning  the  letters  over,  it  oc 
curred  to  him  to  doubt  if  the  second  was  a  cousinly  salu 
tation. 

"  No,  by  Jove  !     Boston  postmark  !'' 

He  tore  it  open.  A  brief  note  from  the  legal  firm  of 
Bostwick  &  Allen,  announcing  the  death  of  their  client, 
Aaron  Tallmadge,  and  the  bare  fact  that  his  entire  estate 
was  left  to  his  sole  surviving  heir  and  grandson,  whose  in 
structions  they  awaited.  The  letter  had  been  to  Nice  and 
back.  It  was  nearly  two  weeks  old. 

"  By  Jove  !'  Gano  dropped  the  letter  on  the  table 
among  the  coffee-cups  and  bits  of  brioche. 

"  What  !  is  she  here  ?"     Driscoll  sat  up  in  bed. 

"  No,  no  ;  I  don't  know.  Listen  to  this."  He  read  the 
letter  aloud. 

"  That's  all  right  !  Milk  felicitation*  !  Look  out,  like  a 
good  fellow,  and  see  if  she  isn't  coming  across  the  court." 

Gano  went  over  to  the  window  and  looked  out  with  nn 
ironic  consciousness  that,  even  in  the  face  of  such  news,  he 
was  scarcely  less  concerned  than  Driscoll  for  the  coming  of 
that  enigmatic  woman  across  the  lamplit,  reeking  court. 
The  drizzle  had  turned  into  long  gray  rods  of  rain  ;  they 
streaked  the  gaslight  and  pricked  the  shallow  pools  unceas 
ingly.  And  he  had  all  that  money !  and  it  was  just  as  he 
had  always  known  it  would  be.  The  essentials  of'  existence 
were  unchanged.  Was  she  never  coming  ?  It's  the  child 
surviving  somewhere  in  most  men,  he  argued  with  himself, 
that  gives  a  woman  like  that  a  charm  beyond  beauty.  But 
she's  beautiful,  too,  he  protested  silently.  Aloud  he  said  : 

"No,  I  don't  see  her." 

"  Look  here,  Gano  ;  do  me  a  favor,  old  man  !  Go  and 
fetch  her." 

''Oh,  I  hardly  think—" 

"  I  tell  you  I  must  see  her  !  Only  for  five  minutes.  Tell 
her  that.  If  I  don't  see  her,  I'll  have  a  hell  of  a  night.  I'd 
do  as  much  for  you,  Gano." 

"  Oh,  all  right,"     He  turned  on  his  heel. 

"  Hold  on  !  you  don't  know  where  she  lives." 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

Gano  knew  perfectly,  but  lie  said,  "  Oh-h." 

"Going  off  like  that  without— you're  full  of  your  mill 
ions  !  Small  blame — small  blame  I"  Driscoll  wrote  down 
the  address  and  handed  it  to  his  friend.  "  Bring  her 
back  with  you,  if  you  can ;  but  it  '11  do  if  she's  here  by 
ten." 

Outside  the  court  Gano  hailed  a  fiacre  and  drove  barely 
five  minutes  before  he  was  set  down  at  a  door  in  a  tenement 
not  conspicuously  different  from  his  own.  A  shabby  man 
with  long  hair,  wearing  a  velveteen  jacket,  had  just  stopped, 
closed  his  dripping  umbrella,  and  rung. 

When  the  door  opened  he  passed  in  without  question. 

"  Madame  Burne  ?"  asked  Gano. 

"  Au  qnatrieme.  Encore  de  la  bone  dans  mon  escalier  \" 
muttered  the  concierge.  "  Faudra  qu'elle  s'en  aille  a  la  fin." 

Gano  ran  up  two  flights,  passing  three  girls  in  the  dim 
light,  who  were  coming  down.  He  almost  overtook  the 
shabby  man,  who  seemed  in  feverish  haste.  Gano  slack 
ened  his  pace  at  the  foot  of  the  third  flight.  The  shabby 
man  hurried  up  without  looking  back,  fled  round  the  pas 
sage  to  the  left,  and  knocked  at  a  door  facing  the  banisters. 
Without  pausing  for  permission,  he  turned  the  knob  and 
went  in,  letting  out  a  gush  of  light  and  the  confused  sound 
of  voices.  Gano  was  conscious  of  a  glow  of  comfort  in  the 
assurance  of  his  heart  that  the  room  entered  by  such  a 
creature,  with  ceremony  so  scant,  was  certainly  not  Mary 
Burne's.  The  shabby  fellow  had  flung  the  door  to,  but  the 
worn-out  fastening  didn't  catch.  The  door  rebounded  and 
stood  partly  open.  Two-thirds  of  the  way  up  this  last  flight 
Gano  turned  his  head  in  the  direction  of  the  voices,  and 
saw  through  the  banisters  and  the  open  door  Mary  Burne 
shaking  hands  with  the  man  who  had  just  entered.  Gano 
stopped  dead.  He  didn't  hear  anything  she  said  ;  he  wasn't 
conscious  of  trying  to  do  so.  He  stood  staring,  incredu 
lous.  Presently  she  passed  out  of  his  range  of  vision.  He 
could  see  some  of  the  others  now,  and  caught  here  and  there 
a  single  unenlightening  word.  He  wondered  vaguely  at  hear 
ing  a  room  full  of  persons  speaking  English  again.  Should 

229 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

he  go  in,  or  should  he  go  back  ?  He  felt  an  indescribable 
shrinking  from  meeting  Mary  among  that  shady  lot.  Men, 
too — more  than  one  !  What  was  a  woman  like  Mary  Burne 
doing  with  such  disreputable- looking —  He  had  lately 
been  killing  time  for  Driscoll  by  reading  aloud  that  original 
story,  Beggars  AIL  It  came  to  him  like  a  form  of  night 
mare  that  their  Madonna  Mary  was  a  confidence  woman. 
This  gathering  was  a  grim  kind  of  thieves'  tea-party,  but 
they  had  left  the  door  open  !  As  he  gave  up  straining  to 
catch  a  glimpse  of  Mary,  and  looked  closer  at  those  nearest 
the  door,  he  saw  there  were  one  or  two  women  he  would 
not  have  thought  suspicious  under  other  circumstances. 
Then  one  of  these  moved  away,  and  revealed  a  creature 
with  raddled  cheeks  and  pencilled  eyes,  wearing  her  dingy 
finery  with  a  clumsiness  not  French,  and  speaking  now  to 
Mary  Burne,  who  had  come  to  her  side  —  speaking  with  a 
cockney  tongue,  and  eying  her  hostess  with  mixed  suspi 
cion  and  curiosity.  A  man,  as  obviously  American,  looking 
like  a  broken-down  billiard-marker,  stood  behind,  and  sit 
ting  by  the  door  was  a  well-dressed  gray-haired  woman, 
with  frightened,  shifty  eyes.  Obvious  tramps  and  beggars 
would  have  fitted  better  into  any  preconceived  scheme  of 
benevolence.  But  these  were  people  of  some  former  decen 
cy,  some  present  alertness  of  intelligence,  like  the  dregs  of 
the  foreigner  class  in  any  land,  lower  than  the  outcast  born, 
because  these  aliens  had  once  ambition,  had  initiative 
enough  to  venture  forth  to  better  their  estate,  and  had  not 
fallen  so  low  without  desperate  clutching  at  foul  means  to 
keep  afloat.  On  each  face  that  undefiimble  stamp  of  fail 
ure.  What  is  it  ?  Where  is  it  ?  Not  always  in  the  eyes 
or  on  the  lips,  not  always  expressed  in  dress  or  even  bear 
ing — in  no  one  thing  that  one  may  lay  a  finger  on  and  say,  "I 
know  him  by  this  mark  !"  There  is  no  name  for  that  elu 
sive,  eloquent,  yet  indelible  sign  life  sets  upon  the  faces  of 
the  lost.  Yet  all  men  know  it  when  they  see  it,  and  in 
stinctively  turn  away  their  eyes. 

In  the  group  that  closed  about  Mary,  some  one  was  pro 
testing  about  something. 

230 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  Perhaps  Jean  Latreille  was  right,"  said  a  man  Gano 
couldn't  see. 

"  Of  course  he  was.      You  need  not  to  blame  him." 

Some  one  was  speaking  with  a  strong  French  accent. 

"Well,  well,"  said  the  woman  with  the  gray  hair.  "I 
don't  feel  sure  it  ought  to  be  encouraged  openly." 

"  Zen,  ought  you  not  to  belong  to  zis  club  ?" 

The  woman  turned  up  an  anxious  face. 

"I've  sent  the  girls  away,  Mrs.  Pitman,"  said  Mary, 
gently.  "I  think  those  of  us  that  are  left  here,  even  the 
new  members,  have  borne  so  much  that  they  are  able  to 
bear  the  truth."  There  was  a  rustle  and  a  noise  of  sitting 
down.  "M.  Pernet  is  right,  I  think,  although  I'm  sorry 
Jean  should  have  deserted  his  wife  and  child.  It  would 
have  been  manlier  not  to  buy  his  liberty  at  the  price  of 
others'  suffering." 

"That's  what  /say." 

The  gray-haired  woman  nodded  at  some  one  out  of  sight. 

"But  who  can  decide  the  problems  of  another  soul?" 
Mary  Burne's  white  face  grew  weary.  "  We  have  enough 
with  our  own." 

"Parfaitement." 

"  You  may  be  sure,"  she  went  on,  nodding  gravely  at 
her  dingy  audience,  "a  young  man  in  vigorous  health 
doesn't  wrench  himself  out  of  the  world  without  good 
cause.  It's  grown  too  common  to  be  any  longer  a  distinc 
tion" — she  smiled  bitterly— "and  yet  it's  not  common 
enough  to  be  any  easier,  or  any  less  reviled."  Her  eyes 
travelled  from  one  forlorn  face  to  the  other  with  a  kindling 
compassion.  "But  let  us  take  courage,  friends;  we  who 
have  done  without  bread  can  do  without  approval — except 
of  one  kind."  She  paused  an  instant ;  a  look  of  fanaticism 
leaped  into  the  white  face.  "No  matter  what  we  have 
done  in  the  past,  we  will  not  live,  from  this  time  on,  with 
out  self-respect.  Two  or  three  of  us  have  talked  a  good 
deal  here  about  our  duties  to  each  other.  Let  us  think  to 
night  of  the  ultimate  duty  we  owe  ourselves.  You  know 
already  how  some  of  us  cannot  find  courage  to  live  till  we 

231 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

have  first  assured  ourselves  of  courage  to  die,  if  need  be. 
I've  told  yon,  one  or  two  of  you,  that  it  was  like  that  with 
me  ;  that  when  hideous  things  drove  me  away  from  home, 
things  I'd  borne  for  years,  and  should  never  have  borne  a 
moment" — she  flung  up  her  head  with  swelling  nostrils— 
"  when  my  awakening  came,  1  said  to  myself,  '  I'll  go  away 
and  work  ;  I'll  go  to  Paris  ;  and  if  I  can't  live  there  de 
cently,  I  shall  die  there/  All  through  the  long  voyage  I 
kept  thinking  that  I  was  probably  going,  as  fast  as  the  ship 
could  carry  me,  towards  my  grave.  When  one  has  lived  days 
like  that,  life  doesn't  daunt  one  any  more,  nor  death  either." 

"  No,  no  !"  murmured  a  voice  behind  the  door. 

"  How  shall  any  of  us  justify  the  desperate  clinging  to 
life  for  the  mere  sake  of  living  ?"  She  asked  the  question 
as  if  she  were  addressing  a  drawing-room  full  of  prosperous 
people  who  had  the  merest  speculative  interest  in  the  in 
quiry.  "  How  many  instances  do  we  see  of  men  and  wom 
en  who  have  outlived  not  only  their  usefulness,  but  their 
satisfactions  ?  And  yet  they  drag  along  their  gray  exist 
ence,  a  dreary  penance  to  themselves,  and  a  menace  to  those 
who  still  can  hope.  There  are  those  who  cling  to  the  pleas 
ant  fiction  that  every  one  is  of  some  good  use  in  the  world. 
If  that  is  so,  it  is  equally  true  that  every  one  does  some  ill, 
stands  in  somebody's  light,  and  bars  his  way  to  progress. 
But  it  is  not  with  the  real  or  imaginary  ' helpers'  we  have 
to  deal,  but  with  those  who  through  misfortune  have  lost 
their  grip  on  circumstance,  and  whose  whole  remaining 
energy  is  absorbed  in  an  animal-like  clinging  to  existence. 
Many  of  the  world's  sick  and  wounded  are  capable  of  feel 
ing  the  attraction  of  the  idea  of  suicide,  and  are  held  back 
from  freedom  by  two  superstitions.  One  was  made  current 
by  the  people  who  lacked  the  courage  to  'go  and  do  like 
wise,'  and  who,  therefore,  have  branded  all  suicides  'luna 
tics 'or  'cowards.'  The  other  superstition  was  given  the 
world  by  the  priests,  who  would  have  been  less  zealous 
and  less  astute  than  history  shows  them  if  they'd  not 
barred  this  escape  with  mighty  threats  and  penalties." 

-Hah  !"    -Priests!"     "Oh  yes!" 

232 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

A  little  undercurrent  from  the  crowd  crept  through  her 
words. 

"  Many  a  gentle  soul  in  the  past/'  she  went  on,  "  has  en 
dured  years  of  needless  agony  rather  than  buy  release  at 
the  price  of  public  execration — being  denied  decent  burial, 
and  flung  into  a  ditch  at  the  cross-ways  with  a  stake  driven 
through  the  body.  We  don't  treat  these  refugees  quite 
that  way  now,,  but  in  being  less  violent  we  are  not  less 
cruel.  When  we  hear  of  a  suicide,  the  first  insult  we 
offer  him  is  to  ask,  '  Were  his  accounts  right  ?'  Next, 
6  Was  he  a  victim  to  bad  habits  ?' '' 

"Exactly  !"  cried  the  voice,  in  broken  English.  "What 
Babin  said  of  Jean — " 

"Sh!  sh!" 

"If  it  is  found  the  dead  man  was  a  defaulter  or  an 
opium-eater,  the  most  aimless  cumberer  of  the  earth  experi 
ences  a  certain  sense  of  justification.  If  a  man  is  a  villain, 
he  must  want  to  get  out  of  the  world  ;  but  for  honest  folk 
life  cannot  be  too  long.  Consequently,  to  support  exist 
ence  (or  let  some  one  else  do  it)  seerns  in  some  way  a  trib 
ute  to  a  man's  personal  worth  or  mental  poise.  If  it  is 
found  that  the  suicide  had  the  audacity  to  leave  the  world 
without  the  urging  of  some  vulgar  misdeed  to  account  for 
his  unpleasant  independence,  then  up  goes  the  universal 
cry,  '  He  was  insane  !'  Without  doubt !  The  world  is  good 
enough  for  his  betters,  why  not  for  him  ?  (  Oh,  the  fellow 
was  crazy  !'  And  that  settles  it.  As  a  proof  we  are  men 
tally  sound,  we  will  live  on  at  any  cost,  be  it  our  own  souls 
or  our  brothers'.  No,  no.  I  tell  you  this  thirst  for  life 
cannot  be  proved  so  worthy  an  instinct  as  some  have  hoped 
to  show.  It  is  the  instinct  that  makes  the  brute  world  one 
vast  slaughter-house.  '  One  must  live '  would  be  the  mot 
to  of  the  shark,  if  he  had  one.  '  One  must  live '  is  in  the 
roar  of  the  Bengal  tiger,  and  the  jackal's  cry.  I  do  not  see 
but  the  greed  of  life  is  the  strongest  survival  in  man  of 
primitive  animal  instinct.  But  it  is  not  the  noblest  of  our 
legacies.  Over  many  an  unworthy  page  of  human  history 
is  that  legend,  '  One  must  live."  She  stretched  out  her 

233 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

hands,  crying,  "//  is  not  true!  One  must  live  worthily,  or 
one  can  die  !  I  feel  a  passionate  sense  of  the  wrong  and 
ruin  wrought  by  the  general  view.  I  feel  it" — she  dropped 
her  eyes — "  when  I  hear  that  a  man  steals  to  keep  from 
starving,  when" — her  voice  was  heavy  with  shame — "when 
I  see  wide  thoroughfares  full  at  night  of  young  girls  and 
brazen  women  '  who  must  live.'  *  Why  don't  they  see  there 
is  an  escape  ?'  I  think."  She  threw  back  her  head  with  a 
quick  movement,  and  just  as  suddenly  the  look  of  courage 
dimmed.  "  Then  I  realize  that  some  of  them,  even  if  they 
could  rise  above  the  animal  instinct  to  prolong  life  at  any 
price,  would  remember  priestly  warnings,  and  fancy  their 
chances  in  the  hereafter  brighter  if  they  lived  on — vile 
scavengers  on  the  highways  of  the  world  ! — than  if  they 
were  brave  enough  to  disdain  an  evil  heritage,  and  wise 
enough  not  to  fear  death.  Those  who  are  so  lustful  of  life" 
— far  beyond  the  little  company  she  gazed,  as  one  gather 
ing  in  a  survey  all  the  peoples  of  the  earth — "they  are  like 
beggars  at  a  feast.  They  glut  themselves  indiscriminately, 
afraid  to  let  a  single  dish  go  by.  They  sit  stupid  and  gorg 
ed,  still  mechanically  taking  of  everything  passed  them, 
with  dulled  taste  and  jaded  appetite,  eating  and  drinking, 
with  sense  left  to  think  only,  'Who  knows  ?  we  may  never 
be  at  such  a  feast  again/  I  tell  you  " — she  was  back  now 
with  her  dingy  guests — "it  is  the  beast  in  us  that 
clings  so  fiercely  to  life.  In  the  case  of  the  unfortu 
nate,  the  hard-pressed,  the  ancient  instinct  often  out 
lives  hope,  principle,  innocence  —  all  that's  best  in  hu 
manity." 

"But  there  are  a  good  many— "  interrupted  the  gray- 
haired  woman,  feebly. 

"Yes,  yes,  thank  Heaven  !"  Mary  Burne  agreed,  in  the 
old  gentle  voice.  "For  those  happy  ones  who  have  found, 
or  think  they  have  found,  a  chance  of  doing  some  service, 
or  to  those  who  for  any  reason  find  the  world  or  themselves 
an  interesting  and  compensating  study,  there  are  only  con 
gratulations,  and  a  plea  for  fairer  judgment  of  less  fortu 
nate,  maybe  not  less  sane  or  noble,  men." 

234 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  Like  ze  poor  Jean  Latreille,"  lamented  the  French 
man  behind  the  door.  "No  work;  only  me  for  friend." 

"Yes,  yes,"  assented  Mary  Burne,  as  if  she  knew  the 
story,  and  others  to  cap  it.  "  No  one  who  is  in  sympathetic 
touch  with  his  kind  can  honestly  affirm  that  every  man 
and  woman  has  something  worth  living  for,  and  can,  if  he 
and  she  choose,  make  an  honest  livelihood.  It  is  frankly 
untrue  !  Life  is  becoming  more  and  more  difficult  to  the 
majority ;  worldly  success  is  more  and  more  bought  at  the 
price  of  personal  dignity.  Mere  existence  for  the  million 
is  secured  only  by  a  warfare  in  which  he  who  does  not  slay 
is  slain.  But  it  is  idle  to  enlarge  upon  the  results  of  our 
civilization  ;  every  one  with  eyes  sees  how  the  conflict  rages, 
and  how  the  weak  and  often  finer-natured  go  to  the  wall. 
It  is  not  for  me  to  urge  that  it  is  sad,  or  wasteful,  but  only 
that  it  is.  My  plea,  as  some  of  you  know,  is  that  more 
should  realize  there  is  honorable  retreat  this  side  moral 
overthrow." 

The  gray-haired  woman  moved  uneasily.  The  speaker, 
glancing  at  her,  seemed  to  answer  an  unuttered  protest : 

"Let  no  one  say  God  would  have  a  man  yield  bit  by  bit 
his  faith  and  charity,  accepting  any  terms,  so  that  he  may 
be  allowed  to  draw  his  coward  breath  a  little  span  the  more. 
There  is  a  kind  of  spiritual  cannibalism  among  us,  more 
appalling  than  the  simpler  sort  we  shudder  to  think  is  prac 
tised  in  Darkest  Africa,  or  the  islands  of  the  South  Sea.  It 
flourishes  on  our  fairest  hopes,  and  fills  its  witch's  caldron 
with  the  consciences  of  men  and  the  honor  of  our  women. 
1  We  must  live  P  the  victims  cry,  and  give  up  all  that  makes 
life  worth  the  living.  Maimed,  stripped  of  grace  and  dig 
nity,  they  wander  forth  into  the  world,  to  deaden  the  pub 
lic  sense  of  moral  decency  by  the  spectacle  of  their  shame. 
The  people  who  are  shocked  that  one  should  think  of  sui 
cide  permit  themselves  a  mild  enthusiasm  that  long  ago  a 
blind  King  of  Bohemia  could  care  so  much  for  his  cause 
that  he  gathered  a  sheaf  of  his  enemies7  spears  in  his  breast 
rather  than  face  defeat.  We  are  told  there  was  once  a 
Brutus,  too,  and  many  another  in  the  brave  old  time,  who 

235 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

showed  there  was  a  refuge  this  side  dishonor.  But  the 
world  has  forgotten,  and  ancient  valor  is  renamed  modern 
cowardice." 

Her  scorn  -  filled  eyes  dropped  an  instant  on  the  .gray- 
haired  woman's  fingers  fumbling  feebly  under  her  mantle. 
Below  it  the  end  of  a  rosary  could  be  seen  twitching 
against  her  gown.  Mary  Burne  lifted  quiet  eyes  from  the 
dangling  crucifix. 

"Looking  at  the  question  from  the  religious  stand 
point,"  she  said,  "it  is  impious  to  suppose  we  can  take 
the  Creator  by  surprise  or  defeat  His  ends.  If  He  sent 
us  into  the  world,  He  knew  just  what  weapons  He  put 
into  our  hands,  where  the  weak  spots  in  our  armor  were, 
and  what  foes  would  meet  us.  In  the  case  of  the  suicide, 
lie  knew  just  how  many  hard  blows  he  could  meet  like  a 
soldier  and  a  man,  as  well  as  He  knew  there  would  some 
day  come  a  stroke  that  would  cut  him  down.  Does  God 
sleep  while  the  battle  rages  ?''  she  cried,  with  swelling  but 
uneven  cadence — "while  the  wounded  man  drags  himself 
away  from  the  dying,  pursued  by  visions  of  captivity  and 
the  loss  of  all  he  fought  for  ?"  She  shook  her  head  with 
slow,  pitying  solemnity.  "  Believers  must  think  the  eye 
of  God  is  on  this  child  of  His,  as  he  creeps  wearily  out  of 
the  strife  and  turns  into  a  dark  by-way,  groping  along  to 
the  little  gate  at  the  end.  The  fugitive  looks  back  an  in 
stant " — into  her  own  clear  eyes  came  a  curious  filminess — 
"he  is  too  calm  to  seem  heroic,  and  the  pain  is  fading  out 
of  his  face.  '  Good  -bye,  my  enemies''  —she  made  the 
faintest  little  gesture  of  farewell  to  some  world  without 
her  walls — "'good-bye,  my  friends"  — she  nodded  to  the 
dingy  crew  within,  and  lifted  haggard  eyes  above  their 
heads  —  "'temptations,  ghosts  of  failure  and  of  grief, 
good-bye!'  Silently  turning,  he  passes  out  through  the 
little  gate  and  shuts  it  fast  behind  him.  Wherever  he 
goes,  no  believer  can  suppose  he  has  defeated  God,  or 
strayed  outside  the  limits  of  His  mercy." 

As  she  ended  she  came  forward.  Gano,  forgetting  the 
dusk  of  the  staircase,  and  thinking  on  the  spur  of  the  mo- 

206 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

ment  that  she  had  caught  sight  of  him,  turned  and  made 
his  way  noiselessly  down  the  three  flights.  He  reached 
the  street  before  he  realized  that  Mary's  motion  forward 
had  been  to  the  gray-haired  woman  with  the  crucifix.  But 
why  had  he  been  so  afraid  she  should  speak  to  him  ?  He 
leaned  against  the  lintel  of  the  open  door  watching  the 
rain.  What  strange  thing  had  befallen  his  tender  interest 
in  this  woman  ?  It  was  gone.  Simply  wiped  out.  In  its 
place  a  shrinking  of  his  very  soul.  He  had  thought  her 
so  ''womanly/'  full  of  protecting  tenderness  and  steadfast 
cheer ;  and,  behold  !  this  abyss  of  hoplessness,  this  dark, 
iron  resolution,  this  unshrinking  acceptance  of  the  tragedy 
of  life. 

The  opinions  she  had  given  out,  to  be  sure  he  shared 
them  more  or  less  ;  but  it  hurt  him  to  think  women  shared 
them,  above  all  the  woman  he—  A  woman  without  hope 
—better  she  were  without  heart  !  Away,  away  with  this 
unfeminine  acceptance  of  the  worst.  It  made  the  under 
lying  horror  of  things  more  real,  more  unescapable  !  Away 
with  such  views,  except  for  the  occasional  philosophic 
mood  of  man.  Who  wanted  to  have  them  daily,  hourly 
brought  to  mind  ?  He  knew  he  should  never  see  Mary 
Burne  again  without  seeing  that  dingy  circle  of  the  lost, 
and  the  look  of  unshrinking  despair  that  hardened  and 
whitened  in  her  face. 

Her  old  sheltering  mother  -  gentleness,  where  was  it  ? 
His  old  tenderness  for  the  tenderness  in  her,  where  was 
that  ?  Gone,  gone,  and  in  its  place  this  staggering  dis 
like  !  He  tried  to  think  that,  unselfconscious  as  she  had 
been  in  manner,  she  had  been  theatrical  in  thought ;  he 
recalled  some  of  her  sentences — she  was  a  phrase-maker  ! 
She  liked  standing  up  there,  even  before  such  an  audience, 
listening  to  the  sound  of  her  own  voice,  and  airing  views 
that  she  no  doubt  thought  original  and  bold.  He  did  not 
for  a  moment  realize  that  just  because  he  in  the  main 
agreed  with  her  "beyond  refuge/"'  he  shrank  from  hear 
ing  himself  echoed  back  to  himself  from  the  imagined  ha 
ven  of  a  woman's  heart.  It  was  a  situation  meet  for  wry, 

287 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

ironic  laughter  that  the  woman  he  had  been  drawn  to  for 
her  supposed  embodiment  of  man's  soothing  ultra-feminine 
ideal  should  be  caught  playing  the  part  of  a  dingy  nine 
teenth-century  Joan  of  Arc,  urging  men  to  battle  and  to 
death. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

THE  concierge  appeared,  angry  and  shivery,  and  bade 
him  either  come  in  or  go  out.  He  was  in  the  act  of  doing 
the  latter  when  he  remembered  Driscoll.  He  turned  back 
and  faced  the  angry  woman. 

"  Go  up  to  Madame  Burne,"  he  said,  giving  the  woman 
a  franc,  "and  tell  her — wait!"  He  searched  his  pockets, 
and  finally  drew  the  envelope  off  Mrs.  Gano's  birthday  let 
ter,  and  wrote  on  the  back  : 

"Driscoll  unable  to  sleep  without  some  word  from  you.  Please 
send  down  a  message  for  him." 

"  Give  her  that  and  bring  me  the  answer." 

The  woman  shuffled  up-stairs.  He  stood  there  in  the 
dingy  passage,  waiting,  cogitating.  Suppose  Mary  were  to 
send  word  that  after  all  she  would  come  when  that  infernal 
club  broke  up,  what  should  he  do  ?  He  would  certainly 
have  to  protect  poor  old  Driscoll  against  her  pitiless  fanat 
icism.  That  much  was  clear.  It  took  her  a  long  time  to 
scribble  a  line.  He  paced  back  and  forth  from  the  foot  of 
the  mud-tracked  stair  to  the  open  door,  where  the  rain  fell 
ceaselessly.  With  a  sudden  elation  he  thought  of  the  change 
in  his  fortunes,  and  how  soon  he  should  have  turned  his 
back  upon  all  this  squalor.  A  millionaire  !  Yes,  it  had  a 
good  ring.  It  took  the  sound  of  Mary  Burne's  voice  out 
of  his  tortured  ears. 

Suddenly  he  paused,  hearing  with  relief  the  shambling 
footsteps  of  the  returning  concierge,  a  relief  rudely  dashed 
with  fear  of  the  message  she  might  be  bringing. 

A  quicker  figure  slipped  before  the  square,  slow-moving 

239 


TIIK    OPEN    QUESTION 

woman  ;    it   was   Mary  Burne,  running  down   the   stairs, 
dressed  to  go  out. 

"  I  am  sorry  to  have  kept  you,"  she  said.  If  she  noticed 
Gano's  changed  manner,  she  put  it  down  to  anxiety  for  his 
friend.  "Come,  I've  brought  an  umbrella,"  she  said,  al 
most  sharply,  as  Gano  stood  an  instant  looking  out  for  a 
fiacre ;  "it's  nearly  as  quick  to  walk,  and  I — I— 

He  took  the  umbrella  from  her  silently,  and  they  hurried 
on  side  by  side  in  the  rain.  Gano,  with  growing  agitation, 
searched  for  some  way  of  letting  her  know  that  he  was  in 
possession  of  the  situation,  and  meant  to  remain  in  pos 
session. 

As  they  turned  into  the  Rue  de  Provence  she  stopped, 
breathless. 

"  Are  you  quite  sure  he  wants  to  see  me  only  for  a  min 
ute  ?" 

"So  he  says." 

"  lie  understands  that  just  at  present  I  can't  sit  up  with 
him  any  more  ?" 

"  He  doesn't  expect  you  to  stay  to-night,  at  any  rate," 
Gano  answered,  in  a  determined  voice.  lie  began  to 
walk  on. 

"Mr.  Gano."  She  laid  an  arresting  hand  on  his  arm. 
lie  looked  down  coldly  at  the  white  face.  "  You've  shown 
too  plainly  in  these  last  weeks  to  what  lengths  your  friend 
ship  for  Dick  can  go.  I  don't  pretend  to  apologize  for  ask 
ing  if  you  can  spare  the  time  to  take  him  away  for  a  few 
weeks  as  soon  as  he  gets  a  little  better." 

The  man  hesitated.     She  misunderstood. 

"  I've  just  got  some  money  from  the  Semaine"  she  went 
on,  "and  I  can  anticipate  my  next  payment.  I've  told 
you  how  I  owe  it  to  Mr.  Driscoll  that  I  have  the  money  at 
all.  It's  his  in  a  sense,  anyhow." 

"  You  want  to  get  him  out  of  Paris  ?" 

"  Yes,  anywhere  for  a  change." 

"  I  might  do  that  if  he  can  be  moved." 

"  Oh,  thank  you,  thank  you.  Dick  can't  say  he  hasn't 
got  friends.  You  are  good  about  it."  They  splashed  on 

240 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

a  few  steps  in  the  downpour,,  and  she  slackened  her  pace 
again.  "But  since  you  are  going  away  alone  with  him — 
and,  anyhow,  I  ought  to  tell  you.  He's  developing  a  kind 
of  monomania.  He  doesn't  want  to  live — wants —  Her 
voice  choked. 

"I  know/'  said  Gano. 

"  You  know  !     He's  ventured  to  say  it  to  you  ?" 

"Yes." 

"Then,  you  see,  it's  serious."  She  was  clinging  to  him 
again.  Gano  nodded.  Before  he  could  help  himself  he 
was  trying  her. 

"You  see,  he'll  never  get  well." 

"  How  can  you  say  that  ?  and  say  it  so — so — 

Indignant  tears  stood  in  her  upturned  eyes,  and  she  took 
her  hands  off  his  arm. 

"'Surely  you  know  it's  true." 

"  I  only  know  that  he's  still  alive,  and  that  I  love  him." 

They  walked  on — they  were  nearly  at  the  door. 

"  You  know  how  he  suffers,"  began  Gano. 

"Everybody  suffers,"  she  interrupted.  "He  knows 
nothing  about  the  worst  pain.  And  he  has  his  art;  he  has 
you  to  care  about  him,  and — he  has  me.  Oh,  Mr.  Gano" 
— she  turned  on  him  suddenly — "help  me  to  take  care  of 
him — help  me,  for  God's  sake — help  me  to  keep  him  in  the 
world  !" 

"  Yes,  yes  ;  I  give  you  my  word." 

A  great  weight  was  lifted  off  them  both.  They  went  up 
stairs  together,  but  Gano  left  Mary  at  Driscoll's  door.  He 
wrote  some  letters  in  his  own  room,  then  he  went  softly 
up-stairs,  heard  the  low,  pleasant  sound  of  voices,  and  came 
down  without  interrupting  them.  He  went  to  bed,  and 
slept  soundly  till  the  morning. 

"I  shall  cable  Bostwick  &  Allen  first  thing  after  break 
fast,"  he  said  to  himself. 

When  he  was  dressed,  he  went  up-stairs  as  usual  to  Dris- 

coll,  knocked  lightly,  and,  without  waiting,  went  in.     Mary 

Burne  was  still  there,  kneeling  by  the  bedside.     It  flashed 

over  Gano  that  it  had  been  something  like  this  very  picture 

Q  241 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

that  had  first  set  him  thinking  about  Mary  Burne.  But 
the  spell  had  lost  its  potency  ;  something  had  happened ; 
some  chord  of  sympathy  had  snapped.  He  could  think  of 
his  friend  whole-heartedly  now,  without  a  woman's  thrust 
ing  her  face  between  them.  Driscoll  was  asleep  this  morn 
ing,  just  as  he  had  been  that  other  time  when  Gano  had 
found  Mary  Burne  worn  out  with  watching  by  the  bedside  ; 
but  his  face  was  hidden.  Mary  stirred  and  turned  round. 
Gano  started.  No  sleep  weighed  down  her  eyelids  ;  her 
eyes  were  wide  and  quick-glancing,  but  seemed  unseeing  ; 
the  agonized  face  was  pinched  and  gray-white,  like  chalk. 

"  AVhat  is  it  ?     What—" 

Gano  sprang  forward  to  the  bed.  Driscoll's  face  was  no 
longer  in  the  shadow  now. 

"He's  gone,"  said  Mary. 

"  Not  dead  ?" 

"Yes,  dead." 

She  got  up  slowly,  staggering  a  little.  Her  cloak  was 
round  her.  She  went  unsteadily  to  the  opposite  side  of 
the  room  and  picked  up  her  hat.  She  seemed  to  forget  to 
put  it  on,  and  stood  witli  it  aimlessly  in  her  hands,  those 
strained,  bright -glancing  eyes  moving  uncannily  in  the 
drawn  white  mask  of  a  face.  Gano  had  flung  himself 
down  by  the  bed.  He  laid  his  hand  over  DriscolFs.  It 
was  cold. 

"  When  did  it  happen  ?"  Gano  asked  ;  and  as  the  word 
"happen"  left  his  lips,  he  started  up  and  stared  at  the 
woman. 

"About  four  o'clock,"  she  said,  going  in  that  blind  way 
to  the  table. 

He  had  the  impulse  to  rush  forward  and  seize  her  by  the 
shoulders.  He  would  force  those  restless  eyes  to  meet  his 
steadily  for  once,  and  give  up  their  secret ;  but  she  was 
counting  some  gold  pieces  out  of  her  purse,  doing  it  by  the 
instinct  of  touch,  while  her  roving,  animal -like  glance 
seemed  to  dash  itself  against  window,  wall,  and  door,  seek 
ing  an  escape. 

"  How  did  it  come  ?"  Gano  demanded. 

242 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  Quite  quietly  ;  no  pain — no  pain  at  the  last." 

Her  muffled  voice  seemed  to  reach  him  from  far  off. 

"  Why  didn't  you  call  me  ?" 

"No  good,"  she  said,  tonelessly ;  "and  besides,  he  held 
fast  to  my  hand.  I  am  leaving  some  money  here."  She 
motioned  to  the  little  pile  of  ten  and  twenty  franc  pieces 
on  the  table,  and  moved  towards  the  door.  "  You'll  see  to 
what's  necessary."  And,  without  waiting  for  his  assur 
ance,  "Fve  enough  to  pay  for  everything/'  she  said,  and 
went  out. 

Gano  found  his  first  impressions  weakened  by  Mary 
Burners  clear  and  convincing  official  account  of  the  death. 
The  doctor  accepted  it  without  misgiving.  Why  should  a 
layman  have  a  doubt  ? 

Driscoll  was  buried,  and  his  few  effects  were  bought  in. 
by  Mary  Burne  at  the  sale.  When  Gano  went  to  say  good 
bye  to  her  the  next  day  he  was  told  she  had  given  up  her 
old  lodging,  and  left  no  address  behind. 

Gano's  original  reluctance  to  return  home  had  not  been 
so  very  serious.  Had  his  grandfather  been  a  little  forbear 
ing,  he  could  have  had  the  young  man  back  in  Boston  in 
six  months  ;  but  now,  too  much  had  been  sacrificed  on  the 
altar  of  an  impetuous  resolve  for  Gano  to  consider  kindly 
going  to  America  at  once.  There  was  plenty  of  time  for 
that.  He  had  sent  instructions  to  Messrs.  Bostwick  & 
Allen,  and  he  allowed  the  "great  political  organ"  to  re 
main  in  the  experienced  hands  that  had  done  so  well  by  it 
in  Aaron  Tallmadge's  declining  years. 

He  went  to  Nice,  and  brought  the  De  Poincys  back  with 
him  to  Paris,  where  he  had  taken  a  house.  Henri  de  Poincy, 
even  when  little  by  little  he  learned  something  of  those 
years  of  struggle,  could  not  see  that  his  friend  was  essen 
tially  changed  by  their  rough  lessoning.  Ethan  had  never, 
even  in  the  ignorant  and  care-free  days,  been  either  very 
outgoing  or  very  light  of  heart.  De  Poincy,  as  the  elder, 
had  long  ago  recognized  his  friend  as  one  of  those  unex 
pected,  but  not  uncommon,  products  of  luxurious  modern 

248 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

life — u  young  man  whose  vivid  perception  of  the  under- 
lying  tragedy  of  the  common  lot  had  seemed  out  of  all  pro 
portion  to  his  possible  experience.  If  any  difference  ap 
peared  in  him  now,  it  was  that  his  old  easy  faith  in  concrete 
human  nature,  as  opposed  to  his  deep  mistrust  of  life  in 
the  abstract,  had  been  somewhat  corrected— and  that  was 
well,  Henri  de  Poincy  thought.  The  young  diplomat  did 
not  discover  that,  of  all  the  faith-destroying  spectacles  his 
friend  had  looked  upon,  not  the  least,  to  just  his  cast  of 
mind,  was  the  hot  haste  made,  in  that  same  city  where  he 
had  walked  wanting  bread,  to  court  and  fete  the  new  mill 
ionaire.  But  Gano  had  left  this  phase  of  life  so  far  be 
hind  him,  he  had  got  so  out  of  touch  with  it,  that  he  was 
obliged  to  learn  over  and  over  again  that  inevitable  lesson 
taught  affluent  young  America  by  the  sage  Old  World— that 
money-bags  are  less  easily  and  quickly  filled  in  Europe,  and 
the  man  who  carries  one  that  overflows  will  lack  little  that 
the  craftier  civilization  can  lay  at  his  feet,  fiano's  partic 
ular  kind  of  self-love  revolted  at  some  of  his  experiences 
at  the  hands  of  certain  elegant  and  well-born  adventurers, 
male  and  female,  who,  the  American  had  fancied,  liked 
him  and  sought  him  for  himself.  He  was  very  young  in 
many  ways,  for  all  his  hardships  and  his  twenty-six  years. 
Still,  he  was  not  so  much  of  a  fool  but  that  in  time  he 
learned  his  lesson.  His  fault  lay  in  taking  it  too  serious 
ly.  So  it  was  that,  despite  his  renewed  literary  activities 
and  successes,  and  the  need  impressed  on  him  of  studying 
les  moeurs,  he  yielded  more  and  more  to  his  fondness  for 
camping  out,  for  fishing,  and  for  cruising  about  the  Medi 
terranean  with  Henri  de  Poincy. 

"I  never  knew  a  fellow,"  that  amiable  young  French 
man  would  say — ''never  knew  a  fellow  so  much  at  his  ease 
in  the  world,  who  seemed  so  anxious  to  be  rid  of  people  as 
you  are." 

"  I'm  not  at  my  ease  in  the  world/' 
"Ah,  I  should  have  said  in  drawing-rooms." 
"Another  matter.     The  drawing-room  is  the  best  place 
J  know  to  avoid  knowing  people.     1  should  like  to  spend 

244 


TUB    OPEN    QUESTION 

all  my  days  that  aren't  spent  with  a  rod  on  a  river-bank,  or 
lying  in  a  boat  with  you,  in  drawing-rooms.  I'd  like  "- 
he  stared  up  into  the  high-piled  clouds  sailing  across  the 
intense  blue — "I'd  like  the  big  Engine-driver  up  yonder  to 
look  down  through  the  white  steam-puffs,  and  say  :  '  My 
boy,  I  give  you  my  word  of  honor  that  I'll  never  run  you 
into  any  closer  quarters  with  life  than  you  are  in  now." 

"I  see,"  laughed  De  Poincy,  "lovely  woman  has  pur 
sued  you  till  you  fight  shy.  But  don't  lay  it  all  to  your 
looks  and  your  winning  ways,  my  friend  ;  you're  known  to 
have  dollars." 

"Yes."  His  dark  face  flushed  under  some  quick  wave 
of  feeling.  "The  most  surprising  thing  I've  found  in  Eu 
rope  is  the  dominance  of  the  money  motive,  that  quality 
that  they  had  told  me  distinguished  the  American." 

He  laughed  a  little  bitterly. 

"Well,"  said  De  Poincy,  "you  know  you  do  hear  more 
in  America  about  money  than  you  do  anywhere." 

"  Exactly.  Money's  talked  about  Avith  childlike  and 
damnable  iteration  ;  but,  by  all  the  gods  !  if  decent  people 
with  us  want  it,  they  work  for  it ;  they  don't  cringe  and 
angle  for  it  ;  they  offer  labor  in  exchange,  not  themselves. 
They  don't,  as  a  nation,  make  it  the  basis  of  friendship,  of 
marriage." 

"  If  you  don't,  it's  because  American  women  are  too  self- 
willed  to  hear  prudence." 

"  Yes,  thank  God  !  And  yet  we  have  the  intelligent  for 
eigner  saying  the  climate  makes  our  women  sexless."  He 
stopped  and  laughed.  "  I  admit  les  Americaines  don't  so 
universally  look  on  love  and  marriage  as  a  profession,  their 
only  means  of  settlement  in  life.  But  I'll  tell  you  what  it  is, 
my  friend  :  the  American,  with  all  his  outward  frankness 
and  naivete,  cares  more,  like  men  of  other  nations,  for  the 
thing  he  doesn't  talk  about  than  for  things  he's  always 
flinging  in  your  face.  With  people  on  this  side,  it's  money 
which  is  too  sacred  to  be  mentioned  except  on  solemn  oc 
casions  " — he  made  the  slightest  possible  grimace — "but 
which  is  the  supreme  consideration.  With  us,  the  thing 

245 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

we  don't  talk  about,  and  yet  care  for  the  more,  is  the 
relation  between  the  sexes,  the  ideal  of  a  chivalry  that 
the  elder  world  has  lost,  or,  more  truly,  never  had,  I 
think/" 

"The  truth  is,  you've  been  long  enough  away  from 
America  to  begin  to  idealize  it.  By  the  way,  I  thought 
you  were  of  the  elite  asked  to  the  Chateau  d'Avrancheville 
this  autumn." 

"This  is  better  than  Normandy,"  he  said,  shortly. 

"Ah,  but  think  of  the  dear  creatures  gathered  there  ?" 

"  I'd  rather  think  about  'em." 

"  Mademoiselle  Lucie  this  time,  hein?" 

"Oh  no — only  that  I  don't  love  my  kind." 

De  Poincy  shook  his  head. 

"That  you  don't  love  that  kind  shows  you're  getting 
blase." 

Gano  sat  up,  and  fixed  his  dark  eyes  on  his  friend's  face. 

"  You  know  you're  talking  nonsense.  You'll  allow  I 
met  her  under  peculiar  circumstances." 

"After  helping  you  to  fish  her  out  of  an  Italian  lake,  I 
will  allow  the  circumstances  were  romantic." 

"I  thought  she— 

"  Of  course,  love  at  first  sight.  Just  the  thing  to  fetch 
you." 

"  I  thought  she  liked  me  as  a  girl  at  home  might  have 
liked  me,  who  hadn't  heard  that  my  grandfather — 

lie  thumped  out  an  oath  as  he  thrust  his  hands  deep 
down  in  his  yacht  man' 8  jacket. 

De  Poincy  smiled. 

"  She's  so  young,"  Gano  went  on — "  probably  less  sophis 
ticated,  I  thought,  than  our  American  girls." 

"To  be  sure,  a  ravishing  ingenue." 

"  And  here  she  was,  ready  to  throw  over  poor  Parthenay 
like  that" — lie  tossed  his  cigarette  overboard — "caring  for 
him  all  the  time,  as  Parthenay  showed  me.  Then  this  inge 
nue,  after  turning  the  Tallmadge  dollars  into  francs  in  her 
pretty  baby  head,  was  calmly  arranging  to  help  me  to  spend 
them  here  in  France.  How  the  devil  they  knew  on  such 

246 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

short  acquaintance — before  the  settlement  question  came 
up-" 

"  Oh,  her  brother  asked  me  that  first  day." 

"  What  ?" 

De  Poincy  nodded. 

"  And  when  I  thought  they  didn't  so  much  as  know  that 
I  was  American  !"  He  laughed  with  that  excessive  bitter 
ness  of  youth  perturbed,  and  pretended  to  speak  apolo 
getically.  "  You  see,  I've  plumed  myself  on  my  French 
since  I  was  seven,  and  my  name  tells  nothing." 

"  Your  French  is  all  right,  but  you  don't  imagine  people 
like  that  would  put  themselves  out  for  the  premier  venue 
as  they  did  for  you  from  the  start." 

Grano  shrugged. 

"My  mistake  was  that,  even  without  my  banker's  refer 
ence,  I  didn't  look  upon  myself  as  the  premier  venu." 

"  I  must  say  I  admired  the  charming  way  they  conveyed 
the  idea  to  you  that  Mademoiselle  Lucie— 

"Shut  up." 

"My  dear  fellow,  you  would  never  have  dreamed  of 
Mademoiselle  Lucie,  enchanting  as  she  is,  if  it  hadn't  been 
for  their  tact  in  pointing  out  that — " 

"And  you  looked  on  !" 

"  To  be  sure,  and  envied  you  your  damned  good  luck. 
She's  an  adorable  creature,,  and  would  spend  your  money 
with  distinction." 

"  Thanks.  I  needn't  have  come  so  far  to  find  a  woman 
who  could  manage  that." 

"I'm  in  the  enemy's  camp,"  De  Poincy  went  on.  "I 
want  you  to  settle  in  France." 

"And  I— I  want— 

Gano  looked  out  over  the  dancing  waves,  face  to  face  on 
a  sudden  with  something  so  new  and  unexpected  as  to  be 
almost  incredible. 

"  What  do  you  want  ?"  asked  De  Poincy. 

"  I  want  to  go  back  to  America  by  the  first  boat." 

"  You're  joking." 

"  I'm  in  dead  earnest.  It  sounds  sudden,  but  it  isn't. 

247 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

Something's  been  the  matter  with  me  for  a  deuce  of  a  long 
time.  I  haven't  known  what  it  was.  I  do  now.  I'm  home 
sick." 

"  Doesn't  it  strike  you  you've  postponed  it  a  bit  ?" 

"  Dare  say.  We're  offered  every  inducement  to  postpone 
it.  We  Americans  are  as  pleased  with  Europe  as  children 
at  a  fair.  We  run  up  and  down  your  marts  with  our 
purses  out,  delighted,  astonished  at  your  wares,  at  your 
ways  ;  we  want  a  souvenir  from  every  booth,  we  want  a 
peep  at  every  side-show,  we  think  it  impossible  ever  to  tire 
of  the  merry-go-round."  His  voice  dropped.  "  When  the 
night  comes  we're  ready  to  go  home." 

"  Night  ?    Niaiserie!" 

Gauo  jumped  up  and  paced  the  deck. 

"  I  say,  Henri,  do  you  mind  going  back  to  Marseilles  ? 
If  you  do,  mind,  I  must— 

"  Of  course  I  don't  mind.  It  '11  give  you  time  to  recover 
on  the  way." 

He  laughed  good-naturedly. 

His  companion  paced  silently  up  and  down  in  the  fading 
light. 

"  I've  known  other  fellows,"  De  Poincy  went  on,  after  a 
long  silence — "plenty  of  others,  get  rather  feverish  about 
the  U.  S.  A.,  but  I  didn't  expect  it  of  you." 

"  Oh,  I'm  just  like  the  rest." 

"Hadn't  observed  the  likeness  before." 

"  I've  found  the  Old  World  life  a  good  enough  game  to 
play  at  ;  I've  got  no  reason  to  complain." 

"  Thanks,  I'm  sure,  in  the  name  of  France,  not  to  men 
tion  England  and  Italy." 

"  Oh,  you  understand  me  well  enough.  It's  wonderfully 
attractive,  this  charming  Old  World,  but  frorr  our  point  of 
view  it  isn't  life." 

"  Pretty  good  imitation." 

"  That's  just  it,"  he  laughed.  "  It's  pretty  and  it's  good, 
but  it's  imitation.  It  copies,  with  Chinese  fidelity,  old 
originals  that  were  once,  long  ago,  alive  and  quick  ;  but 
to-day— 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  You're  taking  a  leaf  out  of  your  old  governor's  book/' 
said  De  Poincy,  with  smiling  malice.  "  I  hear  cousin  Aaron 
now."  And  be  caricatured  him  mercilessly.  " '  To  an 
American,  sir,  Europe  is  either  a  museum  or  a  scene  out 
of  a  comic  opera.'  Now,  if  one  said  anything  like  that  of 
America  you'd  declare  Avar  by  return  of  post.  But  we  "- 
lie  lit  his  cigarette  and  threw  away  the  match  with  a  flour 
ish — <<  we  are  amused  ;  we  give  you  exactly  the  license  you 
demand — that  of  the  child  at  a  fair." 

"  Well,  look  here,  old  man  " — Gano  laid  his  hand  on  De 
Poincy's  shoulder — "this  child  wants  to  catch  the  first 
boat  home." 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

HE  was  really  coming  this  time;  in  less  than  an  hour 
he  would  be  at  the  Fort.  They  were  all  sitting  in  the 
parlor,  waiting,  in  festal  array.  Late  as  it  was  in  the 
year,  the  clear  autumn  afternoon  was  steeped  in  warm  sun 
shine.  An  occasional  golden  dogwood  leaf  fluttered  past 
the  open  windows,  like  a  lazy  yellow  bird. 

"It  reminds  me  of  October  in  Maryland/5  said  Mrs. 
Gano,  looking  up  from  the  book  she  was  not  reading.  It 
was,  at  all  events,  mild  enough  to  afford  Emmie  the  ex 
treme  satisfaction  of  wearing  her  white  Confirmation  dress 
in  honor  of  the  momentous  occasion.  Emmie  called  the 
new  frock  her  "  Confirmation  dress/' although  she  had  not 
been  confirmed  in  it,  and  was  not  expecting  to  be  till  next 
spring.  When  it  had  been  decided  before  Julia  Otway's 
party  that  Emmie  must  have  a  new  frock,  she  had  not 
needed  to  be  told  that,  by  a  system  of  tucks  and  turnings 
in,  it  would  have  to  serve  for  high  days  and  holidays  for  a 
long  time.  It  was  characteristic  of  the  child  that,  looking 
into  the  future,  the  day  of  her  Confirmation  should  loom 
so  large. 

Her  dark  curls  were  tied  to-day  with  apple-green  ribbon, 
and  a  green  -and -white  sash  lent  an  air  of  festivity  to 
the  simple  frock,  and  a  snow-drop  look  to  the  pale  little 
girl. 

There  was  nothing  new  in  Mrs.  Gano's  appearance  as  she 
sat  in  state  between  Daniel  Boone  and  the  centre  table, 
nothing  save  the  light  in  her  eyes.  Her  veil,  her  lawn 
sleeves,  and  kerchief  could  not  be  whiter,  even  in  Ethan's 
honor,  and  her  rusty  black  silk  wore  resolutely  its  air  of 
changeless  age.  But  An'  Jerusha,  very  rheumatic  and  tot- 

250 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

tery,  went  brave  as  an.  autumn  sunset.  She  was  peeping  in 
at  the  parlor  door  now,  her  head  done  up  deftly  in  a  purple 
and  orange  bandanna. 

"  I  jes'  think  I'll  go,  mehm,  en  wawtch  fur  Marse  Efan 
f'om  de  terms." 

"  You  are  sure  everything's  ready  ?" 

"Yes,  mehm.  It  wus  po'ful  short  notice,  en  I  kin  tell 
you  it's  been  nip  and  tuck.  No  onery  niggers  could  V  done 
it ;  but  me  and  Venie,  we  done  it."  And  Jerusha  carried 
her  splendid  turban  off  down  the  terrace  with  the  air  of  an 
aged  generalissimo. 

Even  John  Gano  had  made  his  toilet  with  care  to-day. 
He  joined  the  others  in  the  parlor  a  few  minutes  before 
setting  off  to  the  station  to  meet  his  nephew.  Mrs.  Gano's 
sharp  eyes  travelled  over  him  for  once  without  protest. 

"You  do  look  nice,  father/'  said  Val. 

John  Gano  was  prematurely  old.  His  untrimmed  beard, 
his  bent  head  with  its  leonine  mane  of  iron-gray  hair,  lent 
him  an  almost  patriarchal  look.  And  yet  this  man  was 
still  in  the  forties.  Such  forestalling  of  old  age  is  no  un 
familiar  phenomenon  in  America.  He  stood  by  the  win 
dow  drawing  on  the  well-worn  left-hand  glove  ;  the  right, 
carefully  folded,  and  good  almost  as  new,  had  been  much 
carried,  but  never  worn. 

"  I  must  thin  out  these  maples  and  dogwoods,"  he  said, 
with  critical  eyes  on  the  abundant  gold  and  scarlet  foliage 
in  front  of  the  house. 

"No,  no,"  protested  his  mother ;  "I  like  something  be 
fore  my  windows.  Your  pruning  is  too  ruthless." 

"  I  can't  have  the  symmetry  of  the  maples  interfered 
with,"  he  said,  with  great  decision. 

"Don't  be  too  late  to  meec  Ethan." 

".  .  .  grown  astonishingly!"  he  ejaculated  with  pride, 
as  he  went  off ;  "and  only  planted  in  the  fall  of  '81  !" 

Val  had  put  her  hair  up.  But  there  was  too  much  of  it ; 
it  overweighted  the  small  head.  The  shifting  lights  in  the 
unruly  waves,  and  the  blue  of  the  eyes,  were  brought  out 
by  the  particular  shade  of  navy  cloth  that  she  wore — so 

251 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

plainly  made  that  it  had  the  effect  of  a  cunning  artifice  to 
show  off  the  lithe  figure. 

But  it  was  less  art  than  necessity  and  scarcity  of  cloth 
that  governed  the  design.  Aunt  Valeria  had  worn  it,  re 
modelled  to  the  flamboyant  fashion  of  her  day,  but  it  was 
the  identical  blue  travelling-habit  of  family  legend  in  which 
Mrs.  Gano,  as  a  girl,  made  that  journey  across  the  Alle- 
ghanies  in  a  stage-coach.  It  was  the  first  time  Val  had 
worn  it.  She  was  saving  it  up  for  Xew  York.  The  tiny 
silver  disks  down  the  front  of  the  bodice  found  themselves 
again,  after  half  a  century,  buttoning  up  an  eager  young 
body,  panting,  impatient  to  cross  the  mountains  from  this 
side,  with  back  to  the  westering  sun,  and  with  bright  sil 
ver  buttons,  like  bosses  on  a  shield,  ready  to  receive  the 
first  dart  from  out  the  east. 

The  party  in  the  parlor  were  weary  enough  waiting  be 
fore  An'  Jerusha  hobbled  into  the  front  hall  with  a  negro 
lad  in  tow,  who  brought  the  news  that : 

"  Dey's  bin  a  accidunt  on  de  line  ;  nobuddy  hurt,  but  the 
train  '11  be  seberal  hours  late.  Mr.  Gano  reckons  he'll 
stay  ober  at  de  station  till  it  gits  yere." 

"Isn't  it  just  like  cousin  Ethan!"  Emmie  burst  out, 
when  the  two  blacks  had  gone.  "  I  don't  believe  he'll  ever 
come  —  I  don't  believe  we've  got  a  cousin  Ethan!''  she 
wound  up,  with  exasperation. 

Partly  to  reassure  herself,  partly  to  kill  time,  she  went 
into  her  grandmother's  room  and  brought  back  her  cousin's 
latest  photograph. 

"  Don't  you  sometimes  think  this  is  the  crossest-looking 
of  any  ?"  she  whispered  to  Val. 

"I  don't  think  it's  cross — just  grave.  I  hate  grinning 
men." 

"I  don't  want  him  to  grin;  but  his  mouth  looks — 
looks—  Still,  I  do  like  his  mustache  brushed  that  way, 
so  you  can  see  his  lips  a  little.  And  his  eyes  ! — oh  !  his 
eyes  are  beautiful !" 

They  studied  the  picture  for  some  moments  held  be 
tween  them. 

252 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"Do  you  quite  like  his  chin  ?"  pursued  Emmie. 

"  I  like  that  best  of  all  except  his  nose/'  said  Val, 
firmly. 

"  Oh,  what  makes  you  like  his  nose?" 

"Because  it  isn't  too  little,  and  because  it's  rather  bony, 
and  because  it's  got  a  bridge/' 

"Oh,  well,  I  think  I'd  prefer  it  quite  straight  instead  of 
aquiline.  But  he's  very  handsome.  It's  nice  having  him 
look  like  that." 

Emmie  held  the  photograph  off,  and  tilted  her  head 
from  side  to  side. 

"  Grandma  says  cousin  Ethan  and  me  used  to  be  rather 
alike  as  children."  She  smiled  contentedly.  "  I  hope  he'll 
go  to  church." 

She  took  the  picture  back  presently,  but  before  she  re 
placed  it  on  the  mantel-piece  she  looked  round  over  her 
shoulder.  Reassured,  she  kissed  the  pasteboard  fervently, 
and  put  it  down  with  shamefaced,  fluttering  haste. 

The  sun  set  and  the  light  faded.  Still  no  Ethan.  A 
brief  interval  for  supper  at  six,  and  the  three  returned  to 
the  parlor.  Mrs.  Gano  manifested  a  hitherto  unsuspected 
leaning  towards  illumination.  The  branch  candlesticks, 
for  the  first  time  within  the  memory  of  man,  held  each  its 
triple  flame,  and  a  shaded  lamp  shed  a  crimson  glow  over 
the  centre  table.  She  made  an  excursion  into  the  hall, 
and  complained  that  the  Moorish  lamp  burned  faint  and 
insufficiently.  She  came  back,  saying  : 

"It  will  seem  cold  after  France,"  and  with  her  own 
hands  she  lit  the  ready-laid  fire  in  the  grate.  Later,  she 
went  to  the  front  door  and  objected  to  the  absence  of  the 
moon. 

"It's  really  dangerous  coming  up  those  steps  in  the 
pitch  -  dark,  especially  since  the  second  stone  was  bro 
ken." 

At  half-past  eight  she  shut  her  book  suddenly. 

"  Val,  couldn't  you  get  your  father's  new-fangled  lan 
tern —  that  patent  incandescent  contrivance  —  and  set  it 
lighted  at  the  top  of  the  steps  ?" 

253 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  Y-yes,  ma'am,  if  you  think  it  won't  look  funny.  It's 
like  the  head-light  of  an  engine." 

"Funny?  Not  at  all.  There's  nothing  your  cousin 
Ethan  dislikes  so  much  as  the  dark — unless  he's  greatly 
altered." 

So  Val  got  the  lantern,  and  set  it  where  the  wide  diver 
ging  rays  flared  out  across  the  street,  as  a  fan  of  zodiacal 
light  opens  gaudily  across  the  Milky  Way  on  arctic  nights," 
leaving  travellers  on  the  ways  of  this  world  but  little  il 
lumined,  for  all  the  glory  of  heaven. 

So  with  the  patent  incandescent  lantern.  It  picked  out 
the  whitewashed  hitching -post  with  an  ostentation  of 
good-will,  flooded  the  farther  side  of  the  street,  and  fell 
with  a  kind  of  fierce  satisfaction  upon  the  ugly  new  wood 
en  tenements  opposite.  But  this  side,  gutter,  and  gate, 
and  little  flight  of  worn  and  broken  steps,  were  left  in 
denser  darkness. 

Val  came  in,  complaining  for  the  first  time  at  the  delay. 

"I  hope  poor  father  isn't  waiting  all  these  hours  for  his 
supper." 

"Oh,  he'll  go  to  the  hotel,  you  may  be  sure." 

Mrs.  Gano  did  not  speak  as  if  the  thought  brought  her 
particular  satisfaction. 

"  It's  getting  cold  ;  I  just  wish  he'd  come  home.  I  don't 
believe  there's  the  least  use  expecting  cousin  Ethan  before 
to-morrow." 

But  when  Emmie,  half  an  hour  later,  asked  for  serious 
advice  : 

"Now,  do  you  think  I'd  have  time  to  eat  another  apple 
before  he  comes  ?" 

"  I  wouldn't  risk  it,"  said  Val  ;  "  we'll  tell  fortunes  with 
the  seeds  you've  got  already." 

The  two  girls  sat  on  the  moth-eaten  velvet  sofa.  Emmie 
had  spread  her  apple-seeds  out  on  last  evening's  Mioto  Ga 
zette,  and  rubbed  her  fruity  fingers  on  a  diminutive  pocket- 
handkerchief. 

"  Now  I've  named  them,"  she  said,  in  a  whisper. 

Val  pointed  at  random  : 

254 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  One  I  love,  two  I  love,  three  I  love,  I  say  ; 
Four  I  love  with  all  my  heart,  five  I  cast  away  ; 
Six  he  loves,  seven  she  loves,  eight  they  both  love  ; 
Nine  he  comes,  ten  he  tarries, 
Eleven  he  courts — " 

"Oh,"  sighed  Emmie,  "only  one  more  needed." 

She  rumpled  up  the  paper,  and  with  a  glance  towards 
her  grandmother  she  thrust  it  behind  the  sofa. 

"  Pig  !"  remonstrated  Val,  under  her  breath,  for  once  on 
the  side  of  law  and  order. 

"Ain't  a  pig.  I  shall  see  what  my  new  shoe -buttons 
say,"  Emmie  whispered.  "Rich  man,  poor  man,  beggar- 
man,  thief,  doctor,  lawyer,  merchant.  Ha  !  going  to  be  a 
chief tess.  Now  what  shall  I  wear  ?  Silk,  satin,  calico, 
cotton/'  and  on  till  she  was  able  to  announce,  with  dark 
eyes  glancing  and  full  of  glee  :  "  Satin  !" 

"  You  cheated.  You  haven't  any  right  to  count  the  one 
that's  off." 

"  Course  I  have.  They're  brand  -  new  shoes,  and  the 
buttons  haven't  any  right  to  come  off  first  time.  And  it's 
goin'  to  be  satin  —  green  satin,  bright,  beautiful  grass- 
green  satin.  Now  I'll  tell  your  fortune,"  she  added,  ami 
ably. 

But  Val  sprang  up,  crying  : 

"He's  come." 

There  was  the  rattle  of  wheels,  at  all  events,  in  the  quiet 
side  street.  The  two  girls  rushed  to  the  door  and  down  to 
the  gate.  A  carriage  stopped.  Their  father  got  out  with 
his  usual  air  of  weary  haste.  He  was  saying  something 
disparaging  of  that  Europe  he  had  never  seen,  applauding 
his  nephew's  return  to  his  native  land.  Val,  her  grand 
mother's  warning  fresh  in  mind,  caught  up  the  lantern  and 
held  it  high  above  her  head,  slanted  slightly,  so  as  to  catch 
within  the  radius  of  light  the  tall,  slight  figure  that  followed 
her  father  so  lightly  up  the  broken  steps. 

"Your  own  country  has  need  of  you,"  John  Gano  was 
winding  up  ;  "she  is  waiting  for  just  such  a  man." 

He  paused  under  the  red-bud  tree. 

255 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

Val  still  stood  with  the  lantern  conscientiously  held  up, 
lost  for  that  first  moment  in  her  own  absorbing  impressions. 
Young  Gano  looked  at  her  with  quick  realization  of  tha 
eager,  buoyant  attitude,  the  uplifted  face  on  which  the 
strong  light  streamed,  the  wide,  earnest  outlook  of  eyes 
with  so  much  more  in  them  of  question  than  of  welcome, 
they  might  have  been  accustomed  to  sweeping  far  horizons 
from  the  watch-towers  of  the  world. 

An  infinitesimal  pause,  and  then  : 

"  How  do  you  do,  America  ?"  he  said,  smiling,  and  took 
his  cousin's  hand. 

Val  felt  instantly  he  was  laughing  at  her  for  a  kind  of 
travesty  of  Liberty  Enlightening  the  World.  She  drew 
back  quickly,  lowering  the  lantern. 

"  I  am  Val,"  she  said,  "  and  this  is  Emmie." 

The  younger  girl  held  up  her  pretty  face,  and  her  cousin 
kissed  her. 

"  Where's  grandmamma  ?"  he  said,  eagerly,  as  he  looked 
up. 

She  stood  at  the  door.  In  the  cross  lights  of  lantern  in 
front  and  Moorish  lamp  behind,  she  seemed  to  be  in  all 
the  animate  world  the  thing  least  changed  since  she  had 
stood  there  to  receive  the  boy  nineteen  summers  before. 
Only  a  little  frailer,  a  little  whiter  haired,  subtly  fined 
down  by  the  years.  With  an  impetuosity  that  made  Val 
tremble  for  the  fragile  watcher  at  the  door,  Ethan  sprang 
forward  and  up  the  two  steps  of  the  porch.  He  stopped 
before  her  with  a  curious  reverence,  and  took  her  gently  in 
his  arms.  Her  head  drooped  on  his  shoulder.  Val  saw 
she  had  drawn  the  veil  across  her  face.  His  arm  still 
round  her,  Ethan  turned  with  her  into  the  hall. 

"What  I"  he  said,  seeing  the  parlor  lit,  *';un  I  company 
this  time  ?" 

"  Tell  Jerusha  to  serve  supper,"  said  Mrs.  Gano,  tremu 
lously,  to  Val. 

"Jerusha!  Fancy  her  being  still  alive!  But  no  sup 
per,  thank  you  ;  there  was  a  dining-car  on  my  miserable 
train." 

256 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

The  others  went  into  the  parlor,  while  Val  took  the  lan 
tern  and  the  message  to  the  kitchen,  and  then  hurried  back. 

Emmie  was  beaming  beside  her  cousin,  sitting  as  close 
to  him  as  she  could  get  on  the  old  velvet  sofa.  Opposite 
sat  Mrs.  Gano,  animated,  smiling.  John  Gano  stood  with 
parted  coat-tails  in  front  of  the  fire. 

•'And  how  does  life  abroad  compare  on  the  whole  with 
life  in  America  ?"  he  was  asking. 

"  Well,  outwardly  it  is  very  different,  of  course." 

"  Different !     I  should  think  so,'7  said  Val,  impulsively. 

*'  Outwardly  different,"  repeated  John  Gano.  **  I  should 
think  the  spirit  as  well — the  point  of  view  utterly  alien 
from  ours." 

"I  believe  I'd  like  Europe,"  said  the  sympathetic  Em 
mie,  "  but  Val's  been  wondering  a  great  deal  how  you 
could  bear  it  so  long,  especially  alter  your  grandfather  was 
dead,  and  you  could  do  as  you  liked." 

Mrs.  Gano  sat  very  straight,  not  joining  in  the  conversa 
tion  at  this  point,  but  succeeding  to  admiration  in  convey 
ing  her  opinions. 

•'  I  dare  say,"  explained  John  Gano  ;  "  there  has  been 
some  not  altogether  unnatural  fear  that  the  Old  World 
might  infect  even  you,  as  it  has  done  other  good  Ameri 
cans." 

"How  is  that  ?" 

John  Gano  shook  his  lion  locks  ominously.  Ethan  looked 
at  his  grandmother.  Her  slow  head  -  shake  set  the  white 
veil  waving.  Evidently,  whatever  the  danger  might  be,  it 
was  something  too  hideous  for  words.  He  looked  at  Val. 
She  turned  away  her  eyes.  The  infected  one  began  to 
smile  involuntarily.  His  youngest  cousin  alone  of  that 
patriotic  company  looked  at  him  with  no  shadow  of  mis 
giving. 

"  There's  a  young  man  belongs  to  this  town,"  she  said, 
beginning  in  gentle  explanatory  tones,  but  waxing  indig 
nant  as  she  went  on,  "  and  his  name's  Jimmie  Battle — 
used  to  be  quite  a  nice  young  man.  Grandma  knew  his 
father's  father—" 

R  2o7 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  Certainly,  I  knew  all  about  the  Battle  family,  from  A 
to  Izzard." 

"Let  me  tell,  grandma.  Well,  Jimmie  Battle  went  to 
Paris  for  a  week,  and  when  he  got  back  to  America  he 
called  himself  James  Battelle.  Everybody  loathes  and 
despises — I  mean,  doesn't  like  Jimmie  any  more." 

The  tension  gave  way  at  this  point,  and  they  joined  in 
Ethan's  laughter. 

"  I'm  afraid,  like  the  abhorred  Mr.  Battelle.  I  didn't  ob 
ject  to  the  French  variant  of  my  name  ;  but  I  did  mind 
the  English  persistence  in  calling  me  Eth-an  Gay-no." 

"  Quite  ridiculous,"  said  his  grandmother. 

"But  did  they  go  on  speaking  of  yon  in  that  horrid 
way  ?"  asked  Val,  incredulously. 

Ethan  nodded. 

"  I  wouldn't  have  stayed  with  such  people  a  minute," 
she  said — "at  least,  only  long  enough  to  see  how  ridicu 
lous  they  were,  and  then  come  straight  home." 

"Miss  Hills,  she's  my  Sunday-school  teacher,"  remarked 
Emmie,  "she's  been  abroad,  and  she  says  all  English 
people  call  cake  cyke." 

"  Ah,  let  us  hope  Miss  Hills  is  more  conversant  with  the 
manners  and  customs  of  the  ancient  Hebrews." 

"  We  thought  you'd  be  standing  up  for  Europe,"  said 
Val,  with  a  commiserating  smile.  "  Perhaps  you'll  say  all 
the  English  don't  say  militree  for  military." 

Ethan  only  laughed,  and  began  to  talk  of  Paris.  Val 
found  herself  listening,  not  to  the  words,  but  to  the  tones 
of  her  cousin's  voice,  with  a  sense  of  rising  excitement. 
Of  all  kinds  of  beauty,  and  of  all  forms  of  fascination,  that 
which  found  the  girl  most  defenceless  was  harmony  in 
sound.  It  is  doubtful  if  any  eloquence  could  have  reached 
her  through  a  cracked  or  raucous  voice.  But  this  one, 
with  its  vibrant,  searching  resonance,  that  yet  held  no 
effect  of  harshness,  its  pliancy,  its  command  of  half 
tones,  its  haunting  timbre — this  was  a  voice  that,  no  mat 
ter  what  it  said,  made  music  and  uttered  charms.  No  one 
in  New  Plymouth,  no  one  Val  had  ever  heard  before, 

258 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

spoke  like  this.  Yet  the  accent  was  frankly  Northern, 
and  the  diction  free  from  any  obtrusive  elegance  or  trace  of 
pedantry.  It  was  the  voice  that  gave  the  words  their  quality. 

Before  to-night  Val  had  judged  of  speech  and  matter 
critically  enough,  being  an  even  uncomfortably  observant 
young  person  ;  but  this  sound  went  thrilling  along  her 
nerves,  setting  up  so  strange  a  tumult  as  to  shut  out  sense. 
After  all,  he  was  only  talking  about  France.  What  did 
France  matter  ?  It  might  as  well  be  Mars.  The  impor 
tant  fact  was  that  in  the  grave,  dark  face,  great  wonderful 
eyes  were  shining,  deeper,  gloomier  than  Emmie's.  But 
his  smile  made  generous  amends.  It  made  the  heart  beat 
to  look  at  the  mobile  mouth.  And  Emmie  had  dared  to 
kiss  him  !  Something  caught  in  Val's  breast  as  she 
thought  of  such  boldness.  But  speaking  of  boldness,  it 
was  to  this  person  she  had  written  for  help  to  get  her  into 
opera.  How  had  she  dared  ?  Did  he  have  the  letter  in 
his  pocket  ?  Would  he  take  it  out  presently,  and  bring 
her  to  confusion  before  the  family  ? 

"  This  room's  exactly  the  same,"  he  said,  suddenly, 
breaking  away  from  the  discussion  as  to  whether  Republi 
canism  suited  the  volatile,  spectacle  -  loving  Gaul.  "My 
old  friend  Daniel  Boone's  still  at  his  post,  I  see  ;  and,  why, 
the  very  silver  paper  on  the  walls  is  the  same  I" 

"No,  no,"  protested  Mrs.  Gano.  "This  is  new.  It 
hasn't  been  up  more  than  " — she  reflected. 

"Nine  years  ago,  this  coming  May,"  said  John  Gano. 

"  Oh,  really  !"  Ethan  passed  his  slim,  brown  finger-tips 
lightly  over  the  wall  behind  the  sofa.  "It's  just  as  nice 
as  the  old  kind  was,"  he  said,  smiling;  "it  comes  off  on 
your  fingers,  shiny  and  metallic." 

"Yes,"  said  Val;  "just  like  the  dust  off  a  butterfly's 
wings." 

"So  it  is."  He  nodded  across  the  room  at  her.  " I  re 
member  what  fun  I  used  to  think  it  to  rub  it  off — just  a 
little,  grandmamma." 

"  If  you  remember  that,"  said  Mrs.  Gano,  indulgently, 
"you  remember  I  always  reproved  you  for  it." 

259 


TJIK    Ol'KN    QUESTION 

"No,  no."  He  jumped  up,  and  stood  very  tall  ami 
smiling  in  front  of  her,  with  his  hands  behind  his  back, 
like  a  guilty  urchin.  "  You've  forgotten.  When  you 
caught  me  with  silvery  fingers,  I  used  to  be  awfully 
alarmed.  I  always  tried  to  disarm  you  by  saying  «  I  was 
afraid  you'd  scold/  Then  you  would  say,  '  I  never  scold. 
1  point  out  your  defects — it's  what  Fm  here  for.'" 

They  all  laughed,  the  two  girls  with  some  misgiving. 

This  repartee  still  did  service  on  occasion. 

"  Oh,  but  those  were  good  times  !"  Yet  even  as  he  said 
the  words  the  gay  look  faded  out  of  his  face.  "  It  was  a 
long  while  ago." 

^  "It's  nineteen  years,"  said  John  (Juno,  who  was  wrest 
ling  with  a  fit  of  coughing.  These  attacks  were  such  a 
commonplace  in  the  family  life  that  the  rest  were  aware 
of  this  one  only  when  Ethan  said  : 

"What  a  frightful  cough  you've  got.  Uncle  John." 

"No— nothing  unusual.  It  begins  like  this  when  the 
cold  weather  comes  on." 

"Oh,  father,  you  don't  call  to-day  cold  !"said  Emmie. 

"Your  uncle  is  much  better  than  he  used  to  be,"  said 
Mrs.  Giino,  rising  with  her  habitual  every-day  decision, 
and  glancing  at  the  clock.  "  You  must  be  tired,  Ethan  ?" 

"  Do  you  think  you're  too  tired—"  Val  began,  and  hesi 
tated,  seized  again  with  an  unaccustomed  shyness. 

"  I'm  as  fresh  as  possible." 

He  turned  and  looked  inquiringly  at  her. 

"I  was  just  thinking  how  excited  An'  Jerusha's  been 
about  your  coming,  and— 

"  Why,  of  course;  I'll  go  out  and  see  her  a  moment." 

"  May  I  come,  too  ?"  asked  Emmie. 

"  Yes,  do."  He  glanced  towards  Val,  but  she  turned 
away  an  indifferent  face.  "  Come." 

He  went  off  with  Emmie,  leaving  Val  behind,  consumed 
with  longing  to  go,  but  feeling  as  if  she  were  chained  to 
her  chair. 

"  I  don't  like  to  see  him  looking  delicate,"  said  John 
Gano. 


260 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  Delicate  !     What  an  idea  I"  remonstrated  his  mother. 

"  He  is  young  to  have  that  slight  inclination  to  stoop." 

"  Mere  habit.  You  see,  he  is  so  tall.  A  man  of  six 
feet  can  afford  to  stoop  just  a  little.  It's  hardly  per 
ceptible." 

John  Gano  shook  his  head. 

"  Thinner  than  he  ought  to  be." 

"  My  patience,  but  you're  hard  to  please  !  As  if  a  fat 
man  weren't  an  abhorrence." 

"I  didn't  say  I  wanted  to  see  him  porpoisical." 

"  A  man  of  Ethan's  age  ought  not  to  have  an  ounce  of 
superfluous  flesh." 

"  Well,  I  should  say  he  hadn't." 

(i  All  of  us  have  invariably  been  thin." 

"  Exactly  what  I  have  in  mind.  Ethan  has  all  the  phys 
ical  characteristics  of  our  family." 

Out  in  the  kitchen  An'  Jerusha  was  expressing  similar 
sentiments. 

' '  Law  sakes  !  I's  tickled  t'  death  you's  come  home.  Jes' 
de  same  as  ebber  ;  spit  en  image  ob  yo'  father.  I  monstus 
glad  t'  see  yo',  Mars  Efan.  Been  ve'y  jubous  'bout  yo'  git- 
ten  back  fo'  I  done  kick  de  bucket,"  and  she  laughed  to 
keep  from  crying  outright. 

Emmie  brought  him  back  in  triumph  to  the  parlor,  and 
they  all  said  good-night. 

When  Val  got  into  bed  and  began  the  inevitable  story 
where  she  left  off  the  night  before,  behold,  the  hero's  face 
was  the  face  of  her  cousin,  and  the  hero's  voice  was  the 
voice  of  Ethan  Gano. 

Val  woke  next  day  with  a  flashing  sense  of  something 
wonderful  having  happened.  She  sat  up  in  bed.  Ah,  yes  ! 
A  bound,  and  she  was  out  on  the  floor,  pushing  wider  open 
the  heavy  shutter. 

Ah  !  how  good  the  air  smelled,  a  little  frosty,  and  yet 
golden,  with  something  in  it  aromatic,  tingling.  She  raced 
through  her  toilet,  but  after  it  was  finished  she  stood  along 
while  in  front  of  the  glass.  Suddenly  she  threw  back  her 

261 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

head  and  snapped  her  fingers  in  the  air.  Then  she  ran 
down-stairs.  Going  out  by  the  veranda,  she  saw  her  cousin 
standing  at  the  farther  end,  where  the  wisteria  hung  down 
in  festoons.  He  was  looking  out  through  the  loops  and 
tangles.  He  turned,  hearing  the  suddenly  arrested  step. 

"  Good-morning,  America,"  he  said,  coming  forward  with 
that  easy  swinging  gait  of  his. 

"  Good-morning,"  said  Val,  half  laughing,  half  offended. 

She  stood  a  little  awkwardly,  seeming  not  to  see  his  hand. 
lie  only  smiled,  and  leaned  his  tall  figure  in  the  fawn-colored 
clothes  against  the  pillar. 

"  Tell  me,  America,  do  you  have  much  weather  as  fine 
as  this  ?" 

"We  have  Indian  summer  in  this  country,  if  that's  what 
you  mean." 

He  looked  so  well  against  the  pillar.  Val  longed  to  take 
up  some  nonchalant  attitude  by  the  one  nearest  her,  but 
she  remembered  it  was  black  with  the  all-pervading  coal- 
dust,  and  forbore  being  picturesque  at  the  price. 

"  Of  course,"  Ethan  assented.  "  I'd  forgotten  you  had 
a  fifth  season  in  your  calendar.  Naturally,  the  old  regula 
tion  four  wouldn't  content  you." 

"  I  can't  think  why  you  talk  as  if  you  weren't  an  Ameri 
can  yourself.  You  might  be  some  poor  foreigner  —  " 

"Just  what  I  am,  I'm  afraid." 


He  nodded. 

"  That's  the  worst  of  living  abroad  a  lot,"  he  said  :  "  you 
are  always  a  foreigner  there.  But  it's  only  when  you  come 
home,  and  find  that  you  are  more  of  a  foreigner  than  ever, 
that  you  begin  to  mind." 

"  You  don't  look  as  if  you  minded  much." 

"  Ah,  that's  the  good  face  I  put  on." 

("Horrid,  sneering  French,  ways,"  she  commented  to 
herself,  not  really  thinking  so,  but  feeling  it  a  duty  and  a 
kind  of  instinctive  defence  to  pretend  she  did.  Something 
rueful  in  his  laugh  was  not  lost  upon  her.) 

"  Still,  I  do  appreciate  your  Indian  summer,"  he  added. 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  I  should  think  so."  She  threw  back  her  head  and 
drew  in  the  sweet,  sun-laden  air.  "  It's  the  very  best  time 
of  all  the  year."  He  didn't  answer.  "  Don't  you  think  so?" 

"  I  think  it  a  little  melancholy,  for  all  it's  so  beautiful." 

"  How  curious  !     It's  the  time  that  makes  me  happiest." 

"  Is  it  ?" 

"  Perhaps  you  prefer  spring  ?"  She  spoke  as  one  conde 
scending  to  childishness.  "  A  good  many  people  seem  to." 

"  Yes,  all  the  old,  and  all—" 

"  All  what  ?" 

"All  foreigners." 

The  breakfast-bell  rang. 

No  trays  went  up-stairs  that  morning.  Everybody  ap 
peared,  and  the  two  girls  couldn't  remember  when  so  gay  a 
party  had  assembled  in  the  dingy  dining-room.  But  the 
pleasantry  was  of  that  strictly  family  character  whose 
special  savor  is  withheld  from  the  outsider. 

As  Ethan  was  taking  his  place  by  Mrs.  Gano,  he  stopped 
suddenly,  catching  sight  of  the  preternaturally  tall  silver 
coffee-pot,  and  made  obeisance. 

"  Sir  or  madam,"  he  said,  "I've  travelled  far  since  we 
parted,  but  I've  never  seen  your  equal." 

Mrs.  Gano  laughed  with  the  rest. 

"  That  means  the  Mioto  air  has  made  you  readier  for 
your  morning  cup  than  you've  been  since  you  were  here  be 
fore.  Or  perhaps  you  agree  with  Frederika  Bremer's  old 
woman,  '  When  I  see  a  coffee-pot,  it's  the  same  to  me  as  if 
I  saw  an  angel  from  heaven.' ' 

"  She  must  have  meant  this  one." 

"  Emmie  has  another  name  for  it,"  said  John  Gano,  also 
unbending. 

"  Father  !"  remonstrated  his  little  daughter,  blushing, 
"  it's  a  great  many  years  since  I  called  it  anything  but 
coffee-pot." 

"  But  before  that  ?"  persisted  cousin  Ethan. 

"  Possi-tot  !" 

And  everybody  but  Emmie  laughed  as  if  it  were  the  finest 
jest  in  the  world. 

263 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

After  breakfast  they  all  walked  about  the  grounds  in  a 
body,  John  Gano  pointing  out  the  superiority  of  his  trees, 
and  Ethan  indicating  his  best-beloved  old  haunts,  the  two 
girls  exchanging  looks  of  amazement  that  he  should  know 
their  playground  so  intimately.  Ethan  was  much  struck 
by  the  general  dilapidation.  If  Uncle  Elijah — peace  to  his 
ashes  ! — had  found  cause  to  remark  nearly  twenty  years  be 
fore  that  the  place  was  going  to  ruin,  there  was  good  ground 
for  the  assertion  to-day. 

Ethan  remembered  the  wilderness  as  being  inexorably 
confined  to  that  vast  region  (pitifully  shrunken  to  the  older 
eye)  below  the  second  flight  of  stone  steps.  But  "Mr/' 
Hall,  who  had  mowed  and  clipped  and  gardened  the  upper 
region,  having  joined  the  ghosts,  for  whom  he  had  felt  so 
little  fellowship  here  on  earth,  the  wilderness  had  risen  in 
his  absence  and  howled,  mounting  terrace  after  terrace,  and 
was  now  laying  open  siege  to  the  very  Fort  itself.  To  be 
sure,  there  were  garden  borders  under  the  front  windows, 
where  John  Gano  lingered  with  a  tender  solicitude,  lament 
ing  for  the  Eschscholtzia's  sake  the  lack  of  sun.  But  the 
flourishing  and  carefully  tended  pansy  border  marked  only 
the  more  definitely  the  surrounding  desolation. 

"There's  a  strange  dog  !"  said  Mrs.  Gano.  "  Some  one 
has  left  the  gate  open." 

"  He  may  have  got  in  down  there  where  there's  a  picket 
missing  in  the  fence,"  said  Ethan. 

"Oh,  that  picket  hasn't  been  there  for  ages,"  Val  an 
swered  ;  "but  the  old  hundred-leaved  rose-bushes  are  so 
thick  in  that  corner,  and  so  thorny,  nothing  can  get  past." 

As  she  ran  forward  to  eject  the  strange  dog,  she  caught 
her  foot  in  the  dry,  tangled  grass,  and,  but  for  Ethan's  quick 
hand,  would  have  fallen. 

"Oh!"  she  said,  flushing  and  looking  confused  ;  then, 
without  any  proper  acknowledgment,  she  darted  off  after 
the  dog. 

"If  /  did  that,  father,  you'd  say  I  was  clumsy,"  said  Em 
mie,  smiling  up  into  his  face  in  the  prettiest  way  in  the 
world. 

264 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  The  grass  is  very  long,"  said  John  Gano — "  long  and 
matted." 

"  It  grows  with  great  rapidity,"  said  his  mother.  "  It 
seems  only  yesterday  we  had  a  man  here  cutting  it." 

"  It  was  the  29th  of  June." 

"Oh,  you  must  be  mistaken/' 

John  Gano  shook  his  head. 

"I  remember  quite  well.  It  was  the  anniversary  of 
Clay's  death." 

Val  joined  them  again,  breathless  from  the  chase.  Ethan 
had  paused  absent-mindedly  near  the  corner  of  the  wooden 
L,  where  the  weather -boarding  was  hanging  loose.  It 
wasn't  in  the  best  taste,  Val  felt,  that  he  should  stare  so  at 
that  strip  of  rotten  wood,  that  refused  any  longer  to  hold 
the  rusty  nails.  She  longed  to  touch  his  arm,  to  rouse 
him. 

"  All  this  needs  renewing,"  admitted  John  Gano,  as 
though  in  answer  to  a  verbal  observation. 

"  A — yes,"  said  Ethan,  and  they  went  on. 

It  was  odd  how  the  unsparing  sunshine  and  a  new  pair 
of  eyes  in  the  party  revealed  the  wide-spread  dilapidation  of 
the  place  to  its  old  inhabitants.  Val  had  hardly  noticed  it 
before. 

John  Gano  picked  up  a  blackened,  weather-worn  shingle 
off  the  grass. 

"  The  equinox  brought  down  a  fresh  crop  of  these,"  he 
said,  tossing  the  old  shingle  into  the  wood-shed. 

"  Comes  off  the  L,  I  suppose,"  said  Ethan. 

"  No,  the  main  roof." 

"  Doesn't  it  leak,  then  ?" 

"  A  little,"  answered  his  uncle,  cheerfully. 

"That  must  be  bad  for  the  house." 

"We  shall  be  roofed  with  slate  next  time,"  said  Mrs. 
Gano  ;  "it  lasts  longer." 

"  Oh,  we  can't  complain  of  the  way  a  shingle  roof  has 
lasted,  that's  done  duty  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century," 
returned  her  son. 

"  Whenever  it  rains  we  have  such  fun,"  said  Emmie. 

265 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"We  carry  up  an  army  of  buckets  and  basins  and  washtubs 
to  catch  the  rain  in  the  attic.  Last  week  it  came  through 
into  father's  room  in  the  night,  and  Val— 

"  Ennneline,"  said  Mrs.  Gano,  "walk  on;  the  path  is 
narrow  here." 

As  they  passed  the  kitchen-window  Ethan  glanced  in. 

"  Good-morning,  Aunt  Jerusha  !     Morning,  Venus  I" 

"  Mawnin'  I" 

"  Mawnin',  Marse  Efan  !" 

The  old  woman  hobbled  delightedly  to  the  window, 
avoiding  a  broken  place  in  the  flooring. 

"I  see  you  don't  neglect  my  knocker  —  shines  like 
gold." 

"  Go  long,  Marse  Efan  !"  Her  rich  chuckling  bubbled 
over.  "  Tooby  suah  I  ain't  disremember  dat  ar  knocker  o' 
yourn — not  oncet  in  twenty  yeah." 

"  Why  do  you  have  those  little  squares  of  zinc  nailed  all 
over  your  kitchen  floor,  Aunt  Jerusha  ?" 

"Law  sakes  alive!" — she  rolled  and  shook — "dey's  a 
despit  lot  o'  rats  down  sullar,  an'  I  can't  b'ar  'em  up  vere 
nohow." 

Ethan  was  the  only  one  of  the  party  outside  to  join  her 
cheerful  laughter.  But  the  ruinous  state  of  the  property 
was  too  obvious  for  him  to  realize  that  he  could  possibly 
be  expected  to  overlook  it. 

When  they  went  in-doors  Ethan  followed  his  grandmother* 
to  her  own  room,  where  he  had  sat  with  her  that  first  even 
ing  so  long  ago  and  heard  that  Jerusha  was  his  aunt.  They 
had  a  long  and  eminently  satisfactory  talk  until,  towards 
its  end,  Ethan  straightforwardly  introduced  the  subject  of 
the  evident  need  of  repairs,  and  the  pleasure  it  would  give 
him  to — 

He  was  "  quite  mistaken,"  she  interrupted,  drawing  her 
self  up,  and,  to  his  amazement,  receiving  the  suggestion  at 
the  point  of  the  sword.  There  was  nothing  wrong  with 
the  place.  He  had  his  head  full  of  chateaus  and  palaces. 
Of  course,  this  was  quite  an  ordinary — 

"No,  no,  it's  not  the  least  ordinary.     It's  picturesque 

266 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

and  beautiful ;  but  it — you  must  see  for  yourself  it's  fall 
ing  to  decay." 

'•'Like  ourselves,  it  doesn't  get  younger;  but  it  natu 
rally  suits  us  better  than  it  can  hope  to  suit  you/' 

He  gave  up  his  point  for  the  time  being,  finding  a  sud 
den  flaw  in  his  own  taste,  that  could  so  soon  after  his  ar 
rival  suggest  that  anything  here  could  be  changed  for  the 
better. 

"  Come  to  the  upper  hall,"  he  said  to  Val  after  the  mid 
day  dinner  ;  "  help  me  to  unpack,  and  see  if  anything  I've 
picked  up  in  my  travels  will  do  for  a  present  to  Aunt  Je- 
rusha." 

Val  followed  him  up -stairs,  into  the  seventh  heaven. 
She  knew  she  ought  to  call  Emmie  ;  but  why  spoil  it  ? 

"  You  never  answered  my  last  letter,'7  she  said  with 
lowered  voice  as  they  reached  the  landing. 

"  Didn't  I  ?  Fm  so  sorry.  I  thought  I  had.  But  it's 
so  long  ago." 

"Not  so  very." 

"  About  three  years.  You've  rather  neglected  me  of 
late."  He  smiled  down  into  her  lifted  eyes. 

"  Perhaps  I  didn't  know  your  new  address." 

"  '  Monroe  et  Cie,  7,  Rue  Scribe,  Paris,' always  finds  me." 

"  I  thought  you  told  grandma  to  write  direct  to  the 
Eue  de  Provence." 

"  Ah  yes,  at  one  time.     I  left  there  a  long  while  ago." 

He  was  unlocking  his  trunk.  Should  she  tell  him  about 
the  letter  that  had  evidently  got  lost  ?  It  somehow  wouldn't 
be  so  easy  as  she  supposed.  And  what  was  the  use  ?  Any 
how,  here  was  Emmie  trailing  lip-stairs  with  a  rather  down 
cast  face,  saying : 

"  Grandma  thought  I  might  come  too  and  see  Aunt 
Jerusha's — " 

"  Of  course ;  and  why  not,  Fd  like  to  know  ?"  said 
Ethan,  with  a  welcoming  look,  as  he  tumbled  his  clothes 
out  on  the  floor.  It  was  awfully  interesting — embarrass 
ing,  too.  What  a  lot  of  things  he  had,  for  a  man  ! 

"  I  hope  he  isn't  a  dandy,"  thought  Val,  with  a  moment's 

267 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

misgiving.  As  a  top-heavy  pile  of  linen  and  flannel  fell 
against  her  arm,  she  was  conscious  of  an  odd  sense  of 
pleasure,  under  her  shrinking  from  the  contact.  It  was 
as  if  he  himself  had  touched  her.  Emmie  knelt  down  and 
gathered  up  the  things,  and  folded  them  with  her  charac 
teristic  clumsy  helpfulness.  These  mechanical  offices  were 
as  far  from  her  limited  range  of  dexterity  as  the  wish  to 
be  of  service  was  ever  present  in  her  amiable  soul. 

"  Now,  this  was  what  I  thought  might  do."  He  opened 
a  box  and  took  out  an  Indian  silver  necklace. 

"Just  the  thing!"  cried  Yal ;  "how  she'll  love  the 
dangles  !" 

"  And  these  for  Venus,  eh  ?"    He  laid  down  two  bangles. 

"Yes,  yes." 

"  Think  of  Venus  havin'  'em  both"  murmured  Emmie, 
hanging  over  them,  fascinated. 

Val  saw  there  were  more  silver  ornaments  in  the  little 
box,  but  Ethan  was  diving  into  the  trunk  again. 

"  This  is  what  I've  brought  you,"  he  said,  still  on  one 
knee  over  the  trunk.  He  turned  and  handed  them  each 
a  little  morocco  case.  A  murmur  of  surprised  thanks,  a 
click  of  opening  clasps,  and  before  each  girl's  eyes  gleamed 
a  tiny  watch,  round  which  lay  coiled  a  fine  little  chain. 

"  Oh,  oh,  oh  !"  Emmie  dropped  a  pile  of  shirts  on  the 
floor  and  danced  about.  "  My  initials  on  the  back  in  pink 
coral  !" 

"  Mine  in  turquoise  !  Oh,  how  did  you  know  blue  was 
my  color  ?"  But  Emmie  had  precipitated  herself  upon 
Ethan's  bosom  and  was  hugging  him  wildly. 

He  was  laughing,  and  crying  "Help!  help!"  And 
when  Emmie  desisted,  "  Help  me  to  throw  those  clothes 
back." 

They  put  everything  away  in  wild  disorder,  except  one 
small  package,  which  he  had  pocketed. 

"  Let's  go  and  show  our  watches  to  grandma,"  said 
Emmie ;  and  they  all  went  down  to  the  long  room. 

Ethan  had  his  hand  on  the  door-knob. 

"  Oh,  we  always  knock,"  said  Emmie,  not  too  excited 

268 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

even  by  a  gold  and  coral  watch  but  what  she  could  supply 
so  alarming  an  omission. 

"Come  in." 

Ethan  paused  a  moment  on  the  threshold  while  his 
cousins  rushed  in.  He  was  thinking  how  that  particular 
"  Come  in,"  aided  perhaps  by  the  preliminary  formality  of 
a  discreet  knock  (how  could  he  have  forgotten  !)  ;  the  un 
changed  aspect  of  the  big  room  and  its  occupant  in  the 
queer  red  chair — how  it  all  gave  him  back  his  childhood  ; 
gave  him  back,  too,  in  some  indefinable  way,  his  old  feel 
ing  of  being  "in  the  Presence."  All  the  adulation  of 
which  he  himself  had  been  the  object  at  home  and  abroad 
had  not  changed  this.  In  Paris  he  was  a  personage  ;  in 
the  press  of  two  continents  he  was  a  respectfully  mentioned 
millionaire  ;  in  the  select  circles  of  half  a  dozen  capitals  he 
was  courted  and  fawned  upon  as  a  great  parti ;  but  in  the 
long  room  he  was  a  vassal,  if  not  still,  a  child.  It  amused 
him  to  think  that  he  humored  the  notion.  Mrs.  Gano  had 
received  the  deputation  smiling,  and  had  put  on  her  spec 
tacles.  But  as  she  examined  the  watches,  while  the  girls 
chorused,  and  Ethan  walked  about,  hands  in  pockets,  look 
ing  at  the  browned  engravings,  the  old  woman  grew  grave. 

"  These  watches  are  very  handsome,"  she  said  ;  "  too 
handsome  for  little  girls." 

"Oh  nor 

"  I'm  not  a  little  girl,"  said  Val  ;  "  I'm—" 

"  They  won't  be  in  keeping,  but  they  are  very  beautiful." 

She  was  shrivelling  up  in  some  unaccountable  way. 

"I  couldn't  think,"  said  Ethan,  coming  forward,  "what 
souvenir  I  should  bring  you  of  France."  He  drew  the 
package  out  of  his  pocket  and  opened  it.  "Do  you  re 
member  how  I  used  to  ask  you  about  the  French  Revolu 
tion  when  I  was  a  child,  and  all  the  stories  you  used  to  tell 
me,  and  how  sorry  we  were  for  Louis  and  poor  Marie  An 
toinette  ?  You  remember  telling  me  how,  when  she  heard 
the  people  were  dying  for  want  of  bread,  she  asked,  '  Why 
don't  they  eat  cake  ?' ': 

He  had  opened  a  box  and  taken  out  an  enamelled  cruci- 

269 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

fix,  from  which  hung  ;i  long  chain  of  small  but  exquisitely 
chosen  pearls  fastened  with  a  jewelled  clasp. 

"This  is  something  Marie  Antoinette  wore.  I  thought 
you'd  like  to  have  it." 

"Oh  no  !"  drawing  back  quickly. 

He  stared  at  her.     She  added,  almost  nervously  : 

*•  I — I  never  wear  jewelry/' 

"  But— but  this  !"  he  protested,  not  a  little  dashed. 

"Why,  grandma,  you're  wearing  pearl  pins  in  your  veil 
this  very  moment,"  said  Val. 

"They  —  oh,  they  are  little  old  seed -pearls;  they  are 
nothing.  I  couldn't  think  of  wearing  a  costly  thing  like 
this."  She  waved  her  long  fingers  towards  the  chain  with 
an  air  of  distaste.  "  Such  things  are  not  suitable  here." 

"  But  why — why  not  ?"  exclaimed  Ethan. 

"  You  have  only  to  look  about,"  she  said,  gravely.  "That 
is  a  beautiful  and  costly  toy,  my  dear.  Keep  it  for  your 
wife." 

"Let's  go  and  give  Jerusha  her  necklace,"  suggested 
Emmie,  by  way  of  carrying  off  a  trying  situation. 

"Ah  yes,"  said  Mrs.  Gano,  with  an  air  of  relief;  "I'm 
glad  you've  remembered  Jerusha,"  and  she  gave  the  silver 
collar  praise  unstinted. 


CHAPTER  XIX 

THE  next  afternoon  Mrs.  Gano  and  her  son  took  Ethan 
out  driving  in  state.  Val  and  Emmie  watched  them  off 
with  eyes  of  envy.  Ethan  looked  back  at  the  young  people 
with  something  of  the  same  expression.  The  hack  was  old 
and  fusty,  and  was  drawn  by  a  single  sorrowful  beast,  but 
there  was  an  air  of  ceremony  about  the  whole  proceeding 
not  lost  on  Ethan.  His  uncle  pointed  out  the  sights,  and, 
in  the  intervals  of  bouts  of  coughing,  discussed  town  and 
national  politics.  Mrs.  Gano,  in  excellent  spirits,  planned 
a  series  of  drives  to  points  of  interest,  in  eveiy  direction, 
as  long  as  the  fine  weather  should  last.  Ethan  began  to 
quail  inwardly  at  the  prospect,  and  yet  these  odd  relations 
interested  him  infinitely  more  than  he  had  expected.  And 
as  soon  as  that  cough  of  his  uncle's  became  intolerable  he 
would  have  urgent  business  in  Boston.  Meanwhile,  apropos 
of  these  drives,  he  realized  that  he  would  never  dare  to 
offer  to  pay  for  the  carriage  hire.  He  turned  the  problem 
over  in  his  mind,  and  after  they  came  home  he  went  out 
and  had  a  conversation  with  the  liveryman.  A  telegram 
was  despatched  to  a  Columbus  carriage  manufactory,  and 
an  appointment  made  with  the  liveryman  to  go  next  day  to 
a  neighboring  farm  and  inspect  some  horseflesh. 

Before  the  week  was  out,  a  brougham  and  a  well-condi 
tioned  pair  of  grays  stood  daily  before  the  Fort,  when  the 
weather  was  clement.  Mrs.  Gano,  less  enthusiastic  over 
this  new  arrival  than  any  one  else,  nevertheless  drove  about 
day  after  day  in  the  lovely  mild  weather,  with  the  top  off 
*' Ethan's  newfangled  coach,"  and  a  look  of  extreme  satis 
faction  upon  her  face.  But  her  son  decided  that,  mild  as 
was  the  autumn  air,  it  came  to  him  in  too  great  draughts 

271 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

behind  the  flying  grays.  After  that  first  august  apparition 
of  the  three  elder  Ganos  in  Ethan's  equipage,  John  Gano 
declined  to  sustain  his  part  in  the  daily  triumphal  progress 
through  the  streets  of  the  appreciative  town.  Naturally, 
in  a  place  of  that  size,  Mrs.  Gano's  millionaire  grandson 
was  the  talk  of  the  hour,  and  Val  and  Emmie  sunned  them 
selves  in  his  reflected  glory.  Such  is  the  callousness  of 
youth,  that  it  was  a  moment  of  scarcely  clouded  rapture  to 
the  younger  generation  when  John  Gano  decided  to  stay 
at  home  and  prune  the  dogwoods. 

Val  and  Emmie  accepted  the  proffered  places  on  the 
front  seat  with  an  excitement  not  to  be  conveyed  to  those 
souls  deadened  by  the  luxury  of  "keeping  a  carriage"  all 
their  lives. 

Ethan  had  tried  to  insist  that  one  of  his  cousins  should 
sit  by  Mrs.  Gano. 

"Nonsense!"  said  that  lady;  "children  always  sit  in 
front/' 

Aunt  Jerusha  and  Venus  peeped  discreetly  round  the 
corner  of  the  house,  as  usual,  to  see  them  start. 

"My!  Miss  Emmie's  growin'  beautifler  and  beautifler," 
Venus  had  said,  as  the  younger  girl  smiled  and  blushed  her 
»oft  "Thank  you,  cousin  Ethan,"  for  his  helping  hand. 

Val,  who  had  already  hopped  in,  turned  and  waved  ex 
citedly  to  the  servants. 

"My  dear!"  remonstrated  her  grandmother,  while  old 
Jerusha  nodded  her  bright  turban  and  whispered  :  "  Yah  ! 
Miss  Emmie's  awful  handsome,  but  she  ain't  wavin' ;  dose 
chillens  tickled  to  death.  Why,  Miss  Val's  face  is  like  a 
lamp." 

As  the  grays  leaped  forward,  and  the  two  young  hearts 
leaped  responsive,  Emmie  had  a  flashing  realization  of  what 
Elijah  felt  like,  going  to  heaven  in  his  chariot  of  fire. 

To  Val  the  rapturous  excitement  of  the  thing  was  just 
another  proof  of  the  infinite  possibilities  life  afforded  for 
being  ecstatically  happy.  She  would  not  have  admitted 
there  was  even  a  heavenly  comparison  wherewith  to  match 
this  blissful  flying  along  with  cousin  Ethan  opposite,  he 

272 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

talking  mostly  to  grandmamma,  of  course,  but  sometimes 
meeting  his  cousin's  eyes,  and  smiling  in  a  way  that  made 
the  breath  catch  in  the  breast. 

Julia  was  coming  out  of  her  gate  that  very  first  day  that 
the  four  drove  by.  Val  sat  up  very  straight,  and  made  her 
a  sign,  subsiding  quickly  upon  a  look  from  Mrs.  Gano.  But 
Ethan  turned  round  and  looked  back. 

••  What  a  pretty  girl  !     Who  is  she  ?" 

'•My  best  friend,"  said  Val.  "You  know,  Fve  shown 
you  her  house." 

'•  Ah  yes — Julia — 

"  Otway.     Such  lovely  people,  all  the  Otways." 

"  A  most  estimable  family,"  admitted  Mrs.  Gano ;  "rather 
free-and-easy  in  their  ways.  As  Emmie  said  when  she  was 
five  or  six,  <  They's  the  kind  of  people  that  sits  on  beds/' 

Emmie  smiled  a  pleased  smile  at  this  recollection  of  in 
fant  perspicacity. 

"  That  was  when  the  Otway  children  were  too  little  to 
know  any  better,"  Val  said.  "  You  wait,  cousin  Ethan, 
till  you  know  Julia.  You  just  ought  to  hear  her  play  the 
piano  !  She's  coming  to  supper  to-morrow,  and,  oh  !  she 
wants  to  know  if  you  like  tennis." 

"  Yes.     Has  she  got  a  court  ?" 

"  A  splendid  one.  Haven't  you  noticed  ?  Just  behind 
the  osage-trees." 

"  Oh,  we'll  go  and  play  some  morning." 

"  There  !  you  see,  grandma,  he  doesn't  think  he's  too  old 
or  too  busy  to  play  games.  But  I  can't  go  in  the  mornings. 
I  have  lessons  with  grandma,  you  know,  till  one  o'clock, 
and  Julia's  at  school  till  half-past  two,  except  on  Satur 
days." 

"So  am  I,"  said  Emmie,  sadly.  "I  wish  I  were  going 
East,  and  needn't  begin  a  term  that  I  couldn't  finish." 

Val  was  conscious  of  something  like  a  qualm  at  not  hav 
ing  thought  about  the  East,  or  even  the  opera,  for  days. 
But  wait !  she  would  find  an  opportunity  of  taking  cousin 
Ethan  into  her  confidence.  Then  the  great  scheme  would 
resume  its  former  gigantic  proportions.  Hitherto,  when- 
s  273 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

ever  she  had  been  alone  with  her  cousin,  she  had  been 
seized  with  a  strange  shyness,  an  excitement  that  put 
everything  else  out  of  her  head  except  that  here  was  she, 
and  here  was  he.  It  was  very  queer  and  very  disconcert 
ing,  but  it  was  a  heavenly  feeling,  all  the  same. 

"  Here's  Miss  Tibbs  coming,"  said  Emmie,  wishing  to 
acquaint  their  guest  with  all  the  leading  characteristics  of 
the  place.  "  She's  quite  the  most  hideous — ahem  ! — well, 
she's  a  very  plain  lady.  And  oh!  do  you  see  that  man 
going  into  the  red-brick  house  ?" 

"  That's  Jimmie  Battle,"  said  Mrs.  Gano. 

"  Yes.  Val,  show  us  how  he  talks  when  he  tries  to  be 
English,  and  then  forgets." 

"  Oh  yes,"  said  Val,  nothing  loath.  "  He  was  telling 
something  funny  that  happened  :  '  I  laahfed  and  I  laahfed, 
and,  oh  golly  !  how  I  luffed  !"; 

"  Val,  I'm  amazed  at  your  language  !" 

"  It's  Jimmie's  language — of  course,  we're  all  amazed." 

"Look,  Val,  there  goes  Harry  Wilbur,"  said  Emmie. 

Yes,  it  was  Harry,  pretending  not  to  see  them.  Val  had 
not  answered  his  last  letters,  .and  since  he  had  not  called 
all  these  days,  he  must  be  "  mad." 

"  Who  is  Harry  Wilbur  ?"  Ethan  asked,  perceiving  the 
interest  taken  in  this  citizen. 

"Son  of  our  old  friend,  Judge  Wilbur,"  said  Mrs.  Gano. 

"  We  used  to  say  he  was  the  handsomest  man  in  New 
Plymouth,"  said  Emmie,  looking  reflectively  at  Ethan. 

"  And  he's  the  best  bat  in  the  West,"  added  Val,  loyally  ; 
but,  oh  !  how  insignificant  blond  men  were  in  comparison 
with — 

They  passed  Miss  Appleby  taking  a  posse  of  her  young 
lady  boarders  out  for  a  walk. 

"They  all  know  you,  cousin  Ethan,  and  they're  just 
dying  to  turn  and  look  back.  We  talked  about  you  all 
recess. " 

"  Did  you  ?"  he  laughed. 

"  Girls  chatter  too  much,"  said  Mrs.  Gano  ;  "  they  were 
more  discreet  in  my  day." 

274 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

But  Emmie  knew  this  was  a  time  of  privilege. 

"  The  girls  at  the  Seminary  are  nearly  every  one  Pres 
byterians.  They  don't  like  being  Presbyterians  at  all." 

"  Why  not  ?" 

"  'Cause  they  can't  come  to  our  church  on  Sunday." 

Now  they  were  going  tip  the  hill.  The  young  people 
must  get  out  and  walk.  Delicious  moment  of  being  helped 
to  dismount.  The  unskilful  Emmie,  for  all  cousin  Ethan's 
hand,  had  stumbled  and  twisted  her  foot.  She  was  lifted 
back,  to  a  sympathetic  chorus.  Ethan  had  taken  off  a 
glove  to  try  the  catch  on  the  carriage  door,  which  did  not 
work  easily.  He  held  the  glove  in  his  hand  as  Val  and  he 
trudged  up  the  cinder  road.  Why,  that  was  like  her  fa 
ther  !  And  now  that  Val  thought  of  it,  cousin  Ethan  had 
several  little  ways  that  recalled  her  father.  Both  indulged 
in  fits  of  gloomy,  absolute  silence  "  all  about  nothing,"  when 
they  might  be  discoursing  pleasantly  to  their  fellows.  She 
glanced  at  her  cousin  sideways.  Certainly  he  and  John 
Gano  were  very  different,  too,  in  a  sense.  The  elder  man 
seemed  hewn  out  of  wood,  Ethan  was  cut  in  ivory.  Why 
did  he  say  nothing  ?  He  began  to  draw  on  his  glove,  ab 
sently,  with  a  preoccupied  air. 

He  was  thinking  to-day  of  Mary  Burne.  Where  was 
she  ?  Had  she  solved  the  enigma  ?  He  tried  to  shake 
her  out  of  his  thoughts,  but  she  came  back  and  back. 

Val  snatched  a  mullein  leaf  from  the  hill-side  as  she 
passed. 

"Don't  you  love  these  velvety  things  ?"  she  said.  "Just 
feel  before  you  put  on  your  glove." 

"  N-no" — he  looked  suspiciously  at  the  silver-gray  leaf — 
"no,  thank  .you." 

"Why  not  ?" 

"I  don't  like  touching  things  like  that." 

"  But  why  ?" 

"  Oh,  just  an  absurd  notion  of  mine." 

"  But  is  it  a  notion,  or  is  it  a  real  feeling  ?" 

He  laughed. 

"  Now  I  know  what  reality  is  to  my  cousin  Val." 

275 


THE    OPKX    QTESTION 

"  But  this  isn't  prickly.     It's  soft  as  velvet." 

"I  know — too  much  like  velvet." 

"  Do  you  hate  soft  things  ?" 

"  No,  but  1  hate  things  that  catch  my  nails."  He  gave 
a  little  comic  shiver. 

"  Is  that  why  you  won't  take  a  peach  in  your  fingers  ?" 

"  You've  noticed  ?" 

He  turned  his  head  and  glanced  down  at  her.  She 
looked  away. 

*•  I  wonder  what  makes  you  like  that  ?"  she  said. 

"Can't  imagine." 

"  It  must  make  you  shiver  inside  just  to  look  at  our  vel 
veteen  jackets." 

**'  I  don't  so  much  mind  looking  at  them." 

"  But  you'd  hate  to  touch  them  ?" 

He  laughed. 

"  Yes,  fair  catechist,  I  would  ;  and  if  the  murder  must 
out,  it's  because  of  Emmie's  velvet  jacket  that  Emmie's 
ankle's  hurt.  She  wouldn't  have  fallen  if  I  had  lifted  her 
down  instead  of  giving  her  my  hand." 

"  Well,  you  are  funny  !  I  don't  think  much  of  velveteen 
myself,  but  I  like  real  velvet.  And  all  of  us  girls  simply 
love  the  feel  of  mullein,  and  when  we  want  to  have  nice  pink 
cheeks,"  she  said,  in  a  burst  of  confidence,  "we  do  like  this." 

She  rubbed  the  leaf  hard  first  on  one  cheek  and  then  on 
the  other,  till  each  one  flew  a  scarlet  flag. 

"  Most  effective,"  said  Ethan,  with  deliberate  eyes  on 
the  girl;  "but  for  my  part,  I'd  rather  my  cheeks  were 
white,  or  even  pea-green,  than  have  that  thing  touch  me." 

Val  threw  the  mullein  away. 

"  I'm  afraid  I  haven't  any  fine  feelings,"  she  said.  "  I 
like  everything." 

"  I  don't  believe  it." 

She  couldn't  bear  that  compelling  look  of  his. 

"  It  takes  so  long  like  this,"  she  said  ;  "  I'm  going  to  run 
to  the  top,"  and  she  raced  on  before  him.  But  even  so  he 
reached  her  again  before  the  slow-moving  carriage,  going 
the  long  way  round. 

276 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

When  he,  too,  got  to  the  top,  he  saw  her  standing  some 
little  distance  from  the  road  on  the  brow  of  the  hill,  look 
ing  down  upon  river  and  town  ;  her  dress  blown  well  back 
from  the  firmly  set  feet,  the  old  velveteen  jacket  following 
— more  from  long  habit  than  from  excellence  of  cut — the 
slim  young  outlines,  the  shabby  little  hat  held  down  upon 
the  wind-roughened  hair  with  one  hand,  the  other  hand 
thrust  in  a  side-pocket.  It  was  an  unkempt  picture  of  no 
great  prettiness,  and  no  thought  of  prettriness,  but  it  gave 
a  carious  impression  of  eager  life  ;  a  kind  of  dauntlessness 
and  good  faith  that  hit  upon  the  heart. 

"  Well,  America,  what  do  you  think  of  the  prospect  ?" 
said  his  voice  behind  her. 

She  turned  round  with  a  bright  look. 

"  Much  more  than  I'm  going  to  tell  you,  to  be  laughed 
at  for  my  pains." 

"  Oh,  well,  I  can  see  it  for  myself — a  smoky  valley,  a 
muddy  river  with  many  bridges,  some  stormy  -  looking 
clouds — 3 

"  Oh,  that's  not  what  I  see." 

"  What  then  ?" 

"  Well—  Her  eyes  sparkled,  and  then  she  pursed  her 
mouth  as  one  determined  not  to  let  out  secrets  before  the 
fulness  of  time. 

"  Yes  ?" 

Ci  I  hadn't  noticed  the  smoke  in  the  valley,  or  the  mud  in 
the  river,  and  certainly  wasn't  thinking  about  the  scenery 
at  all.  I  never  do." 

"What's  your  objection  to  scenery  ?" 

"  So  horrid  dull.     Not  just  this — all  scenery." 

"  You  think  so  ?" 

"  Oh,  dreadful  !  And  it's  just  the  same  with  birds  and 
trees,  and  all  the  things  the  poets  make  such  a  time  about, 
/can't  be  bothered." 

"  Really  !"  Ethan  was  laughing  at  her  harassed,  over 
done  look. 

"  Oh,  do  forgive  me  !  I  quite  forgot  you  were  a  poet, 
too." 

277 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"I'll  forgive  you  on  condition  you  tell  me  what  you'd 
write  about  if  yon  were  a  poet." 

"Why, 'people,  of  course.  People  are  the  only  things 
that  matter.  I  always  skip  the  scenery.  Everybody  does, 
only  they  don't  tell."  She  had  lowered  her  voice,  as  if  the 
very  faded  grasses  and  the  sunburnt  golden  -  rod  might 
gossip  of  the  heresy.  "It's  been  rather  hard  on  me  that 
my  father,  who  is  so  interesting  and  wonderful  to  talk  to 
about  everything  ^else,  should  waste  so  much  time  on  trees 
and  things.  I've  thought  more  than  once  that  some  day, 
when  he's  in  better  health,  I'll  just  tell  him."  She  nodded 
portentously. 

"  H'm  !     How  will  you  put  it  ?" 

"Oh,  I  should  tell  him  just  honestly  the  beauties  of 
Nature  make  me  sick.'7 

A  pause  of  satisfaction  at  finally  unburdening  her  soul, 
and  then  a  little  start.  She  studied  Ethan's  face  with 
some  anxiety. 

"  Fm  forgetting  again  that  you—  Do  you  mind  if  I  don't 
care  much  about —  She  made  a  vindictive  gesture  towards 
a  small,  wry-growing  oak-tree  clinging  desperately  to  the 
side  of  the  hill  below  them.  "  Do  you  miiid  ?" 

"  I  don't  know  that  I  do." 

"Why  should  you?  I  don't  mind  that  you  hate  my 
jacket — at  least,  not  much.  I  tell  you  what,  we'll  make 
a,  compact.  I'll  never  wear  velvet  or  mullein  leaves  while 
you're  here,  and  you  will  never  mention  the  scenery." 

"Very  well ;  it's  a  bargain." 

Thev  shook  hands.  A  sudden  impulse  made  him  loath  to 
loosen  his  grasp.  As  he  did  so  : 

"Now  tell  me,"  he  said,  "  what  were  you  looking  at  with 
such  a  rapture  of  expectation.  What  interests  you  in  that 
dirty  little  town  ?" 

"  It's  only  dirty  because  it's  so  enterprising,"  she  said, 
apologetically.  "You  can't  stop  to  trouble  about  your 
looks  if  you've  got  a  lot  to  do." 

"Quite  true,  America.  But  still,  what  is  there  besides 
enterprise  in  that  dirty  little  town  that  makes  you— 

278 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"Little!  Why,  my  father  says  there  are  35,000  inhabi 
tants/' 

"Ah,  there's  safety  in  numbers.  I  fancied  from  your 
expression  you  had  forgotten  34,999  of  them." 

"  There's  the  carriage,"  said  Val,  not  looking  in  his  face. 

"  How  long  is  he  going  to  stay,  grandma  ?"  asked  Em 
mie,  as  the  two  figures  came  towards  them. 

"  I  don't  know,  my  dear." 

"I  think  he  means  to  be  here  a  long  while." 

"  What  makes  you  think  so  ?" 

"Well,  he  said  something  to  Val  about  hating  Christ 
mas,  'cause  it  always  made  him  miserable.  Val  said  : 
'Stay  here  with  us  and  you  won't  be  miserable.'  He 
said  :  'No,  I  don't  think  it  would  be  easy  to  be  miserable 
with  you.'  And  he  looked  so  pleased.  Let's  ask  him  to 
stay." 

Mrs.  Gano  watched  the  advancing  pair  with  grave  eyes. 
It  was  rare  to  see  Val  with  such  a  heightened  color. 

It  rained  the  next  day,  and  there  was  no  driving.  But 
Val,  in  any  case,  had  an  old  engagement  of  much  impor 
tance.  Jessie  Hornsey,  a  cousin  of  Harry  Wilbur's,  was 
giving  a  "tea-fight."  Miss  Hornsey  had  "graduated" 
that  June,  and  was,  in  spite  of  her  great  age,  a  particular 
friend  of  Val's,  who  had  been  much  honored  by  her  con 
descension  in  the  past,  and  by  the  special  mark  of  favor  in 
the  present  invitation.  At  the  last  moment  came  little 
pink  note  No.  2,  to  say  that  Miss  Hornsey  had  heard  that 
Miss  Gano  had  a  cousin  staying  with  her  :  would  she  bring 
him  ?  Val,  already  dressed  and  ready  to  go,  precipitated 
herself  down-stairs  to  find  her  cousin.  He  was  stretched 
out  comfortably  before  the  parlor  fire  reading  an  old  bat 
tered  book. 

"Here,  read  this  instead."  She  spread  the  blushing 
sheet  triumphantly  over  the  yellow  page. 

He  looked  up,  smothering  a  yawn  behind  his  even  white 
teeth,  stirred  lazily  in  the  depths  of  his  arm-chair,  and 
then  dropped  his  eyes  upon  Miss  Hornsey's  note. 

279 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  Well  ?"  asked  Val,  impatiently. 

"Well?" 

"What  you  think?" 

"That  this  is  a  very  handsome  proposition." 

"  Will  you  come  ?" 

"  Ah,  that's  another  matter." 

"But  do." 

"What  for?" 

"She's  awfully  nice —she's  Harry's  cousin — and  all  the 
older  girls  and  boys  will  be  there.  You'll  like  it.  I 
should  think  there'd  be  hardly  anybody  else  as  young  as 
I  am." 

"Won't  you  feel  your  inferiority  ?" 

"I  think  it's  very  nice  of  Jessie  Hornsey  to  ask  me." 

He  could  see  she  had  been  proud  of  the  distinction. 

"  Well,  you  go  and  tell  them  I— I've  got  rheumatism, 
and  have  to  sit  in  an  arm-chair.'' 

"Oh,  do  come  !" 

"Just  look  at  the  rain  !" 

"We  can  take  the  horse-cars." 

"Ugh!"  he  shuddered. 

"  What's  the  matter  ?"  she  said,  suspiciously  ;  "you  too 
grand  for  horse-cars  ?" 

"  Not  too  grand,  too  cold." 

"  Put  on  an  overcoat." 

"  Don't  you  think  it's  very  comfortable  here  ?" 

"Yes,  but  Jessie  Hornsey — 

"Do  you  know" — he  laid  the  old  book  on  the  floor  by 
his  chair  and  stretched  out  his  shapely  hands  to  the 
blaze— "do  you  know,  I  think  this  is  much  nicer  than 
tea-lighting  at  Jessie  Hornsey's." 

"What  if  /  don't  go,  either  ?"  said  Val,  with  a  sudden 
inspiration. 

"Why  should  you  ?"  returned  Ethan,  smiling. 

She  whipped  off  her  hat  and  jacket  and  flung  them  011 
the  sofa. 

"  And  you're  all  alone,"  she  said,  in  extenuation  of  her 
sudden  change  of  front. 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"Exactly." 

"  Do  you  know,  you  are  not  at  all  what  I  expected  ?" 

"I'm  very  sorry/' 

"I  used  to  imagine  what  you  were  like,  and  it  wasn't  at 
all  like  this." 

He  sat  up  with  a  look  of  amusement. 

"How  do  I  fall  short?" 

"  You  don't ;  this  is  much  better."  She  was  staring  into 
the  fire  with  great  gravity. 

"You  don't  give  me  a  flattering  idea  of  your  anticipa 
tions,"  he  said. 

She  ignored  the  opportunity  to  reassure  him. 

"I  used  to  wonder  so  if  we  were  never  going  to  meet ; 
I  was  so  tired  waiting,"  she  said. 

"  Oh,  then  you  thought  on  the  whole  you'd  like  to  know 
me  ?" 

"Well,  it's  a  very  queer  feeling — the  feeling  I  mean. 
I  have  it  about  Patti,  too." 

"Oh,  Patti,  too." 

"  You've  heard  her  sing  ?" 

"  Yes." 

"  Of  course,  you've  heard  everything  !"  she  sighed.. 

"What's  the  '  queer  feeling'  ?" 

"Well,  if  I've  heard  and  thought  a  great  deal  about 
some  one,  and  if  they  sing  wonderfully,  or  if  they  wrrite 
beautiful  songs,  and  travel  and  do  interesting  things,  I 
feel — not  so  much  that  I  want  to  meet  them  as  that  it 
would  be  nice  for  them  to  meet  me.  No,  you  aren't  tak 
ing  it  the  way  I  mean.  It's  that  I  know  I  should  appre 
ciate  them,  and  it  must  be  rather  nice  to  be  awfully  appre 
ciated,  even  if  it's  Patti  or  you.  Of  course  you  go  about 
meeting  all  kinds  of  people,  but  there  aren't  many  among 
them  that  take  such  an  interest  as  I  do,  that  know  all 
about  you  when  you  were  little,  how  you  blacked  yourself 
all  over  in  the  attic  and  brought  down  the  door-knocker ; 
about  the  Tallmadges  and  Henri  de  Poincy,  and  all  your 
photographs  and  letters  to  grandma.  Naturally,  nobody 
could  take  such  an  interest  in  you  as  your  own  cousin, 

281 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

and  it  used  to  seem  such  a  waste  that  you  shouldn't 
know  us." 

"  I  quite  agree ;  it  would  have  been  losing  a  golden  op 
portunity/' 

"Oh,  here  she  is!"  said  Emmie,  putting  in  her  head. 
"I  told  grandma  you'd  gone  to  the  party." 

11  Xo,  I'm  not  going.     It's  cold  ;  shut  the  door." 

Emmie  was  proceeding  to  perform  this  operation  on  the 
inside  when  Mrs.  Gano  called  "Val."  With  a  gesture  of 
impatience  the  girl  got  up  and  went  out.  Mrs.  Gano  was 
standing  on  the  threshold  of  the  long  room." 

"You'll  be  very  late  for  the  party." 

"  I'm  not  going." 

"  Why  not  ?" 

"  It's  raining  so." 

"  Well,  I  never  in  all  my  days  heard  you  make  that 
excuse  before  !" 

Val  traced  an  invisible  design  on  the  back  of  the  hall- 
chair. 

'•'  Cousin  Ethan  was  asked,  too.  It  strikes  him  as  being 
a  very  bad  day." 

"  Ethan  ?  Preposterous!  Why  should  he  bother  with 
the  Hornseys  ?" 

There  was  a  pause.     Suddenly  she  asked  : 

"  Was  there  not  an  Archery  Club  meeting  yesterday  ?" 

"Yes,  but  I — I  thought  I  wouldn't  go  when  we  had 
company." 

"  My  dear  child,  the  company  need  not  be  so  much  on 
your  mind.  Your  father  and  I  are  quite  capable  of  enter 
taining  Ethan." 

"Oh  yes,  of  course." 

"You  are  a  mere  child  in  the  eyes  of  a  man  of  the 
world,  don't  forget  that." 

Val  went  on  making  patterns.  It  did  not  escape  Mrs. 
Gano  that  this  was  only  the  second  time  in  all  her  days 
that  Val  had  not  furiously  contested  the  injustice  of  look 
ing  upon  her  from  so  mean  a  point  of  view.  The  girl  stood 
quite  meek  and  reflective. 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"Don't  miss  your  party  because  of  Ethan/'  added  the 
old  woman,  more  gently.  "  You  have  not  understood. 
Your  cousin  has  a  great  deal  to  occupy  him  in  a  world  we 
do  not  belong  to.  It's  of  no  use  for  us  to  disarrange  our 
lives  for  a  person  who  pays  us  a  visit  once  in  twenty  years 
— here  to-day,  gone  to-morrow." 

"  Of  course  not/'  said  Val. 

"  There  is  one  thing  in  particular  that  we  must  all  be 
careful  about."  Mrs.  Gano  sank  her  voice,  although  the 
heavy  parlor-door  was  shut.  "  Emmie  has  just  told  me 
that  Ethan  has  some  plan  of  giving  you  children  a  dog 
cart.  Now,  I  can't  have  that." 

"I  thought  you  would  object.     I  said  so." 

"You  were  perfectly  right.  Of  course  Ethan  doesn't 
realize  ;  he  offers  these  things  out  of  sheer  amiability  and 
carelessness.  It's  a  bagatelle  to  him.  To  us" — she  laid 
her  hand  on  Val's  arm — "  it  is  a  question  of  the  principle. 
We  must  guard  against  nothing  so  carefully  as  a  habit  of 
accepting  things  from  a  rich  relation.  It  is  a  situation 
full  of  peril  to  personal  dignity,  to  continuance  of  esteem." 

Thank  Heaven,  thought  Val,  that  shameless  letter  ask 
ing  for  money  had  the  sense  to  go  and  lose  itself  !  What 
a  disgrace  to  have  brought  upon  her  family !  She  felt  a 
spasm  of  nervous  relief  go  down  her  spine  at  the  thought 
of  that  guilty  secret  having  escaped  detection. 

Mrs.  Gano  had  gone  and  opened  the  front  door. 

"Make  haste,  and  you  won't  be  so  very  late." 

Val  went  with  lagging  steps  to  the  parlor,  and  came 
hurrying  out  with  her  things.  Ethan  had  not  even  looked 
round.  He  was  laughing  at  something  Emmie  was  saying. 

"We  haven't  seen  Harry  Wilbur  lately;  ask  him  if  he 
can't  come  in  to-night,"  said  Mrs.  Gano,  as  she  saw  Val  off. 

Oh  yes,  a  great  deal  of  water  had  flowed  under  the 
bridge  since  her  own  daughter  was  young. 

It  was  plain  that  Ethan  was  a  great  success  in  New 
Plymouth.  Not  that  any  of  the  neighbors  knew  him  as 
yet,  not  that  he  had  gone  anywhere  except  to  St.  Thomas's 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

that  first  Sunday ;  but  such  glimpses  as  the  inhabitants 
had  of  him,  whether  at  his  rather  absent-minded  devotions 
or  driving  about  with  Mrs.  Gano,  had  roused  a  fever  of  inter 
est.  The  fact  of  his  great  wealth,  combined  with  his  some 
what  glowering  good  looks,  his  slow  transforming  smile,  ran 
away  with  hearts  by  the  score,  and  made  the  tumble-down 
Fort  a  centre  of  seething  gossip  and  excitement.  Harry 
Wilbur  was  known  to  look  upon  the  new-comer  with  open 
suspicion. 

"  Can't  say  I've  much  use  for  an  American  who  isn't  an 
American, "said  the  florid  Westerner  to  Julia  Otway  at  the 
Ilornsey  "tea-fight." 

"  What  do  you  mean  ?" 

"  Well,  look  at  him." 

"  Where — where  ?" 

Her  unblushing  excitement  seemed  further  to  annoy  the 
usually  equable  Wilbur. 

"  I  don't  mean  he's  here.     But  you've  seen  him,  haven't 

you  ?" 

"Oh  yes,  but  only  at  a  distance.    Have  you  ?" 

"Quite  near  enough.  He's  like  a  Spaniard,  or  some 
kind  of  foreigner,  and  goes  about  looking  as  if  he  owned 
the  earth." 

"Well,  he  does  own  a  good  slice  of  it,  and  as  to  his 
looks,  he's  very  much  like  all  the  rest  of  the  Ganos  except 
Val." 

Julia  had  put  great  pressure  upon  herself  not  to  rush 
over  at  once  and  make  the  new-comer's  acquaintance.  But 
there  was  a  general  feeling  that,  however  much  one  natu 
rally  yearned  to  meet  the  attractive  stranger,  Mrs.  Gano's 
house  was  not  the  place  that  one  could  run  in  and  out 
of  without  invitation.  Julia's  patience  was  rewarded  by 
the  bidding  to  supper,  to  which  she  had  responded  by  the 
suggestion  of  tennis. 

Her  presence  made  a  great  difference  in  the  family  even 
ing  at  the  Fort. 

.John  Gano's  form  of  contribution  to  the  entertainment 
of  his  guest  was  to  play  chess  with  him  after  supper,  or 

284 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

else  engage  him  in  conversation  on  the  subject  of  State 
Rights  versus  Centralization.  Several  nights  of  snch  frivol 
ity  had  satisfied  Ethan. 

"I  hear  that  you  play/'  he  said  to  Julia  Otway,  as  they 
came  out  from  supper. 

She,  nothing  loath,  and  seeming  magnetized  into  forget- 
fulness  of  her  usual  restraint  in  Mrs.  Gano's  presence,  fol 
lowed  him  to  the  piano. 

"  Locked.     Where's  the  key  ?"  Ethan  asked. 

"In  my  dressing-case,"  said  Mrs.  Gano,  nodding  to  Val. 

As  the  girl  came  back  into  the  parlor  with  the  key,  she 
caught  sight  of  the  expression  of  demure  coquetry  with 
which  Julia,  seated  on  the  piano-stool,  was  looking  up  into 
Ethan's  face.  He  was  leaning  against  the  piano,  talking 
and  laughing.  Why,  he  hadn't  looked  as  amused  as  that 
since  he  came  !  What  could  Julia  have  said  ?  With  a 
sudden  chill  upon  her  spirit  Val  came  forward  and  handed 
Ethan  the  key. 

"  Ah,  here  we  are  !" 

He  opened  the  piano,  and  Julia  began  to  play.  Ethan 
went  over  to  the  window  and  watched  her. 

Val  sat  by  her  father.  Julia  was  distressingly  pretty ; 
there  was  no  disguising  the  fact.  Evidently  cousin  Ethan 
thought  so.  How  absorbed  he  was  !  He  was  quite  angry 
at  the  clatter  some  one  was  making  at  the  front  door.  He 
knitted  his  dark  brows  impatiently.  The  interrupter  must 
be  Harry  Wilbur ;  nobody  else  approached  door-knockers 
in  so  athletic  a  spirit.  Yes,  it  was  Harry. 

"  How  do  you  do  ?  I'm  so  glad  to  see  you,"  said  Val, 
with  an  overflowing  cordiality  that  surprised  her  visitor 
quite  as  much  as  it  gratified  him. 

He  went  and  spoke  in  an  undertone  to  Mrs.  Gano,  and 
then  came  back  and  sat  on  the  other  side  of  Val. 

"You  haven't  told  me  yet  why  you  were  so  late  at  the 
Hornseys  to-day,"  he  whispered. 

"It  just  happened  ;  everybody's  late  sometimes." 

"Why  didn't  you  come  to  the  archery  party  yesterday  ?" 

"Had  something  else  to  do." 

285 


T11K    01'EN    QUESTION 

"  Had  to  go  driving  with  cousin  Cnpsus,  eh  ?" 

"If  you  saw  me,  why  didn't  you  bow  ?" 

"Why  have  you  got  your  hair  up?  In  honor  of  cousin 
Croesus  ?  Don't  look  at  me  like  that  or  I  shall  cry."  His 
frank  face  wore  a  broad  smile.  "I  like  your  hair  up  ;  you 
look  scrumptious." 

"  Hush  !  and  listen  to  the  exquisite  playing." 

"I  ain't  musical  like  cousin  Croasus.  Your  singing's 
the  only  music  I  care  about." 

"You  don't  care  about  it ;  you  only  pretend." 

"  I  assure  you,  on  my  honor — 

"Sh  !  cousin  Ethan's  looking  at  us." 

"What  if  he  is?  Great  Caesar's  ghost!  Not  that  I 
blame  him  for  looking  at  yon.  Specially  lately,  you— 

"Hush  !  and  don't  talk  nonsense." 

But  cousin  Ethan  had  lifted  his  head  impatiently,  and 
was  making  her  a  little  sign  for  silence. 

She  shrank  together  as  if  at  a  blow.  Ethan  went  back 
to  the  piano  when  Julia  finished,  and  bent  over  her,  speak 
ing  thanks  and  praises.  He  was  asking  for  something  of 
Brahms'.  Julia  began  again.  This  was  another  success. 
Cousin  Ethan  was  really  impressed  ;  no  doubt  about  it. 
Emmie  went  over  to  the  piano  in  the  midst  of  the  general 
conversation,  and  said  in  her  clear  treble : 

"  Me  and  Val  can  sing  '  Maid  of  Athens."' 

He  seemed  not  to  hear;  he  was  talking  so  earnestly  to 
Julia,  tihc  heard  plainly  enough.  She  was  only  pretend 
ing  to  be  oblivious.  But  Emmie  was  not  to  be  done  out  of 
a  share  of  the  festivit}r. 

"  Cousin  Ethan,  do  you  know  *  Maid  of  Athens?"3 

"  Eh  ?     What  ?    •  Maid  of  Athens  ?'    Yes." 

"  So  do  Val  and  me.     Let's  sing  it." 

"  Very  well.     Will  you  accompany  ?"  he  asked  Julia. 

She  nodded,  and  began  the  prelude. 

Val  didn't  budge. 

Emmie  beckoned.  Val  studied  the  long,  narrow,  heelless 
silk  shoes  on  her  grandmother's  feet,  and  made  no  sign. 

"Come,  Val,"  said  Ethan,  in  an  off-hand  way. 

286 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"Go  and  sing  when  cousin  Croesus  calls,"  murmured 
Harry  Wilbur. 

"I  don't  care  about  'Maid  of  Athens/ "  said  Val,  out 
loud. 

"  Oh  yes  ;  come,"  Ethan  urged,  good-humoredly. 

"  Go  and  sing  when  our  guests  ask  you/'  said  Mrs.  Gano, 
in  a  reproving  undertone ;  and  then,  as  Val  got  up  to  obey, 
she  said,  in  her  usual  clear  accents:  "Not  too  loud.  You 
know  I  don't  like  boisterous  singing  in  a  parlor." 

Val  began  with  the  others,  in  a  voice  quite  depressed 
enough  to  please  Mrs.  Gano.  Even  Emmie's  faint  fluting 
came  out  more  eifectively,  and  Val  could  easier  have  wept 
than  gone  on  singing.  Emmie  sang  two  more  songs,  Julia 
laughing  and  coquetting  with  Ethan  over  prelude  and  in 
terlude  ;  and  then  Julia  played  a  nocturne. 

Harry  Wilbur  made  a  despairing  grimace  at  this  last  per 
formance.  He  rose  presently  with  a  determined  manner, 
and  quietly  bade  Mrs.  Gano  and  her  son  good-night.  Val 
went  with  him  to  the  front  door.  They  stood  talking 
about  her  approaching  departure,  and  how  Wilbur,  too, 
hoped  to  get  something  to  do  "  in  the  East,"  so  that  he 
might  be  a  witness  of  Val's  triumphs.  The  conversation 
pleased  her,  but  her  grandmother  would  be  "making  eye 
brows"  if  she  stayed  so  long. 

"  Good-night,  then.  Look  here,  Val " — he  took  her  hand 
warmly  in  both  his  own — "  I've  been  awfully  cut  up  lately. 
I  was  beginning  to  be  afraid" — he  nodded  his  yellow  head 
towards  the  parlor — "afraid  you  might  be — " 

"Don't  be  a  great  silly  ;"  and  she  ran  back  to  the  family 
circle. 

After  Julia  finished,  she  got  up  while  Ethan  was  still 
talking  to  her,  and  made  her  good-nights  all  round  very 
prettily. 

"  But  it's  quite  early,"  Ethan  had  said. 

"  They  always  send  for  me  at  nine." 

"  Send  !     Don't  you  live  next  door  ?" 

"Not  exactly.  I  have  to  walk  half  round  the  block  to 
get  to  our  gate.  We  aren't  allowed  to  climb  the  fence," 

287 


THE    Ol'KN    QUESTION 

she  added,  in  a  confidential  undertone,  with  a  sly  look 
back  at  Mrs.  Gano  as  she  gave  Ethan  her  hand.  "  Good 
night." 

"Sha'n't  I  see  you  to  your  gate  ?"  he  said,  coming  out 
into  the  hall.  "  My  uncle  ought  not — 

"  No,  thank  you.  I  think  by  the  time  I  get  my  things 
on  some  one  will  be  here  for  me." 

lie  had  refused  to  go  to  the  Hornseys  with  Val,  but  he 
was  quite  ready  to  face  the  elements  in  order  to  take  Julia 
home  ! 

Critical  eyes  marked  the  unusual  haste  of  the  guest's 
hat-pinning  and  jacket-donning. 

"Mrs.  Gano  always  sends  for  Val,"  Julia  said  to  Ethan, 
accounting  for  the  origin  of  the  repulsive  custom. 

He  held  her  jacket  for  her. 

"You  haven't  told  me  yet,"  he  said,  "how  you  learned 
to  play  like  this  ?" 

Julia  laughed,  too  much  pleased  to  venture  on  words. 

"She  has  taken  lessons,"  said  Val,  "ever  since  she  was 
seven." 

"  You  were  sent  away  to  study  ?" 

"  No,"  said  Julia,  tying  her  scarf  with  an  effective  air. 

"  But  she's  had  private  lessons,"  Val  explained,  "  besides 
the  music  classes  at  the  Sem." 

"You  really  mean" — he  was  ignoring  Val  and  looking 
down  upon  the  happy  Julia — "  do  you  mean  you've  learned 
to  play  like  this  in  New  Plymouth  ?" 

"  Yes  ;  of  course  I  practise  a  good  deal." 

"  As  much  as  ever  she  likes,  and  nobody  to  say  *  Not  so 
boisterous,'  and  then  go  and  lock  the  piano." 

"  Well,  I  must  say  I  think  it  a  very  creditable  result 
—with  only  provincial  masters." 

As  he  reached  for  his  hat,  he  caught  sight  of  Val's  face. 

"  America,  thou  wear'st  a  threatening  aspect.  Mustn't 
1  say  provincial  ?" 

At  that  moment  a  knock  resounded  loudly  on  the  door. 
Julia  carried  off  her  disappointment  discreetly  enough,  de 
parting  with  the  servant. 

288 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

The  young  people  went  back  to  the  parlor,  but  a  gloom 
seemed  to  have  fallen  on  the  party.  Mrs.  Gano  was  clos 
ing  the  piano  with  her  son's  help. 

" Emmie  tells  me/'  she  was  saying,  "that  Miss  Julia 
complains  my  piano  is  out  of  tune.  I  wonder,  that  being 
the  case,  she  is  so  fond  of  playing  on  it." 

"  It  is  out  of  tune,"  said  Val ;  "  but  I  suppose  she  thinks 
it  better  than  nothing.  Isn't  she  pretty  ?"  Val  asked  her 
cousin,  in  a  dogged  tone. 

"Extremely — most  charming  little  person." 

"She  usually  has  rather  nice,  retiring  manners,"  re 
marked  Mrs.  Gano. 

And  then  they  said  good-night. 

Ethan  looked  inquiringly  into  his  cousin's  face.  "Ifc 
isn't  late ;  come  out  on  the  veranda  while  I  smoke  a 
cigarette." 

"'I  thought  you  objected  to  s^oing  out  such  weather  as 
this." 

"  But  we  won't  get  wet  on  the  veranda." 

"  No,  not  on  the  veranda  " — but  seeing  Julia  home  was  a 
different  matter. 

"It's  your  bedtime,  Val,"  interposed  Mrs.  Gano — "and 
long  past  yours,  Emmie.  Ethan,  you  must  not  demoralize 
the  children." 

He  laughed,  and  went  out  by  himself. 

"Ethan  forgets  himself,"  said  Mrs.  Gano,  with  low- 
voiced  indignation.  "Imagine  his  asking  a  French  girl, 
or  a  young  Boston  lady,  to  come  out  at  this  hour — while  he 
smoked!"  If  it  had  been  while  he  did  a  little  murdering, 
she  could  not  have  looked  more  horrified.  "He  must  not 
think  manners  are  superfluous  here  !" 

Val  undressed  by  the  open  window,  where  she  could 
smell  the  ascending  smoke,  and  then  she  cried  under  the 
bedclothes  for  what  seemed  to  her  a  long,  long  time. 


CHAPTER  XX 

VAI/S  unwonted  silence  and  aloofness  the  evening  before 
had  not  been  lost  upon  her  cousin.  He  recalled  these  unac 
customed  manifestations  the  next  morning,  smiling  to  him 
self,  and  promising  his  jealous  little  relative  amends.  The 
day,  scarce  well  begun,  beheld  him  on  the  way  to  a  discovery 
that  he  kept  on  making  for  years  :  while  you  were  occupied 
in  realizing  that  Val  Gano  was  hurt  or  disappointed,  she 
was  apparently  getting  over  it  with  such  despatch  that,  as 
you  approached  with  suitable  looks  of  sympathy,  lo !  she 
would  advance  to  meet  your  condolence  witli  banners  fly 
ing  and  trumpets  blaring,  so  to  speak,  obliging  you  hurried- 
ly  to  readjust  your  expression,  in  order  fitly  to  greet  a  per 
son  so  entirely  pleased  with  the  course  of  affairs. 

But  to  think  Val  miraculously  expeditious  in  " getting 
over  things"  was  hardly  to  go  to  the  root  of  the  matter. 
She  did  not  get  over  disappointments;  she  remodelled 
them  in  her  imagination  till  they  were  strokes  of  luck  in 
disguise,  or,  at  the  very  least,  stepping-stones  to  some 
dazzling  victory.  As  she  lay  in  bed  in  the  early  morning, 
she  redressed  the  unequal  balance  of  the  night  before. 
After  all,  Julia  wasn't  going  to  have  the  world-resound 
ing  triumphs  that  awaited  Val.  Poor  Julia  !  let  her  enjoy 
her  little  hour  of  drawing  -  room  success  ;  and  Val  sailed 
away  into  a  realm  of  glory,  carrying  cousin  Ethan  in  her 
train,  and  making  her  toilet  to  the  sound  of  cymbals  and 
hosannas. 

As  the  breakfast-bell  rang,  she  burst  open  her  bedroom 
door  and  went  flying  down-stairs  three  steps  at  a  time. 

''What's  happened  ?"  said  Ethan,  as  he  came  down  be 
hind  her,  reminded  suddenly  of  his  old  friend  Yaffti,  the 

200 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

patron  demon  of  the  stair.  All  that  had  "happened"  ap 
parently  was  that  Ethan  had  grown  decrepit,  else  why  not 
go  toboganning  down  the  banisters  to  breakfast,  or  turn  a 
few  somersaults  along  the  hall  by  way  of  beginning  the 
day  ?  "In  honor  of  what  saint  is  that  ?"  he  called  after 
her,  as  Val  cleared  the  last  three  steps  with  a  leap  and 
a  bound. 

"In  honor  of  St.  Sunshiny  Morning/"  answered  the  girl, 
turning  a  radiant  face  over  her  shoulder,  and  waiting  for 
Ethan  to  overtake  her. 

"Thought  you  told  me  yesterday  you  didn't  take  any 
interest  in  the  weather.  Oh  dear,  no  !  never  noticed  it 
at  all." 

"I  don't  care  a  bit  whether  the  old  sun  shines  or  not ; 
can't  think  what  people  mean,  to  go  bleating  about  the  bad 
weather  as  they  do.  As  if  it  mattered?" 

"And  yet  it's  'Hurrah  !'  and  three  steps  at  a  time  for  a 
sunshiny  morning." 

"  Only  said  that  for  an  excuse — not  to  tell  you  the  real 
name  of  my  patron  saint." 

"But  do.  Tell  me  what's  your  pet  superstition,  and  I'll 
tell  you  mine." 

"Honest  Injun  ?" 

''•'Yes." 

"  Well,  my  pet  superstition — only  it's  not  a  superstition 
— is,  that  I  was  born  lucky." 

"Oh!  what's  the  sign  ?" 

"Sign  ?  Nothing  outward  and  visible,  just  an  inward 
and  spiritual  grace.  You  needn't  jeer  ;  it's  quite  true. 
I'm  sure  I'm  lucky.  Now  I've  told  you  my  great  article  of 
faith,  what's  yours  ?" 

But  Emmie  appeared  at  that  juncture,  and  Val  was  se 
cretly  pleased  that  Ethan  postponed  his  answer.  Breakfast 
was  already  late,  and  still  they  waited  some  time  before 
any  one  else  came  down. 

Presently  Aunt  Jerusha  appeared  with  a  coffee-pot  and 
a  smoking  plate  piled  high  with  something  brown  and 
golden. 

291 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

The  girls  received  her  with  a  round  of  wild  applause. 

'•  Hi  !  flannel-cakes — flannel-cakes  !"  and  they  executed 
a  war -dance  round  the  popular  favorite,  who  "took  her 
call,'7  so  to  speak,  as  pleased  as  any  star-actor  at  having 
brought  off  some  noble  appeal  to  the  great  warm  heart  of 
the  populace,  which  ever  beats  true,  etc. 

"  Law  sakes  !  de  way  dey  goes  on  !"  The  black  woman 
stood  laden  and  smiling  like  some  ebon  effigy  typifying 
plenty  and  good  cheer.  Evidently  loath  to  stop  the  pop 
ular  demonstrations  in  her  honor,  she  still  urged  feebly : 
"  Shucks  !  go  'long,  Miss  Emmie,  wid  yo'  teeterin'  up  and 
down  !  Law  sakes  !  look  de  way  Miss  Val  kin  jump  Jim 
Crow.  Yo'  gran'ma  'ud  be  hoppin'  mad  if  she  cotch  yo' 
doin'  dat  ar  'fore  folks.  He  !  he  !  Sakes  alive,  chillen  ! 
stop  dem  monkey-shines,  and  eat  up  dis  yer  firs'  batch  fo* 
dey  spile." 

"  Yes,  yes."     Val  cut  "  Jim  Crow  "  suddenly  short. 

With  a  lightning  change,  taking  the  place  at  the  head  of 
the  table,  and  adopting  a  dignified  and  official  air,  she 
poured  out  the  piping  hot  coffee. 

"  Nobody  waits  for  anybody  on  flannel-cake  days,"  said 
Emmie,  drawing  in  her  chair  with  a  chastened  satisfaction. 

"  Did  they  give  you  flannel-cakes  in  '  Gay  Paree  '?"  asked 
Val,  as  she  passed  Ethan  his  coffee. 

"No,  they  didn't." 

"  I  suppose,"  she  said,  incredulously — "'  I  suppose  it's 
much  gayer  in  Paris  than  it  is  here  ?" 

"  It's  not  gayer  than  this  so  early  in  the  morning." 

He  looked  at  the  confident,  shadowless  face,  and  instead 
of  comparing  it  with  Mademoiselle  Lucie's  ingenue,  counte 
nance  or  any  beauty  of  the  salon  or  the  stage,  memory  un 
fairly  conjured  up  Mary  Burne  and  her  despair -whitened 
features  as  she  harangued  her  dingy  followers.  "  Not  so 
early  in  the  morning  !"  Even  when  the  lamps  were  lit  there 
were  places  in  Paris  not  so  gay  as  this. 

To  speak  by  the  card,  there  were  people  everywhere,  rich 
and  poor,  a  good  deal  less  pleased  with  the  world  than 
Val  Gano.  Ah  yes  !  this  was  why  she  specially  interested 

292 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

him.  It  was  a  satisfaction  to  have  stumbled  on  the  explana 
tion,  for  she  was  surprisingly  much  in  his  thoughts,  this 
untutored  child,  with  her  bland  belief  in  the  world  and  in 
Val  Gano.  She  was  a  kind  of  pleasant  anodyne  to  a  mind 
over -full  of  misgiving,  overcharged  with  fear  of  life's 
panther-like  capacity  for  quick-leaping  revenge. 

It  was  the  first  morning  since  Ethan's  arrival  that  his 
uncle  did  not  appear. 

No,  he  had  not  had  a  very  good  night,  Mrs.  Gano  said, 
when  at  last  she  came  in.  She  changed  the  conversation 
abruptly,  and  went  up-stairs  when  the  letters  were  brought, 
having  scarcely  tasted  breakfast.  French  postmark  !  A 
letter  from  De  Poincy  ;  riot  very  long,  and  not  much  news. 
He  wrote  chiefly  to  ask  when  Ethan  was  coming  "  home '' 
to  France. 

"  I  am  wondering  if  you  bad  the  courage  to  carry  out  your  bold  de 
sign  of  hunting  up  your  poor  relations  in  the  West.  If  you  did,  I'm 
sorry  for  you.  I  see  it  all  from  here.  The  provincial  setting  which 
all  your  democracy  won't  prevent  from  getting  on  your  nerves,  the 
fervor  of  the  poor  relation's  devotion,  the  bottomless  pit  of  his  need, 
the  unblushing  designs  on  every  single  woman's  part  to  marry  you, 
will,  I  fear  and  trust,  send  you  back  to  us  with  a  chastened  spirit  and 
a  decent  regret  for  your  folly  in  taking  exception  to  Mademoiselle 
Lucie's  charming  way  of  playing  the  universal  game.  She,  by-the- 
way,  is  lost  to  you  forever,  having  just  married  a  wealthy  English 
brewer.,  But  there  are  other  Lucies  over  here,  ready  to  hold  out  their 
pretty  hands  in  welcome  as  soon  as  }'ou  weary  of  the  crudities  of  the 
New  World." 

Ethan  looked  up  with  a  smile  at  his  poor  relations, 
thinking  how  badly  they  played  their  parts. 

'•'  What  conspiracy  are  you  two  hatching  ?"  he  said. 

The  two  sisters,  who  seemed  not,  as  a  rule,  to  have  much 
in  common,  were  whispering  with  great  animation. 

"  Let's  tell  him/'  said  Emmie. 

"No,"  said  Val,  getting  red. 

"Yes,  tell  me." 

"  No,"  repeated  Val. 

"  Why  not  ?"  urged  Emmie.     "  He'll  never  tell." 

293 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"Never." 

"  Well,  we're  talking  about  the  Comet/'  confessed  Em 
mie.  "  You  don't  know  about  it,  do  you  ?" 

"  No." 

"  Of  course  he  doesn't,  silly.  I'll  be  very  angry  if  you 
tell." 

"Isn't a  comet  a  difficult  thing  to  keep  quite  to  your 
selves  ?" 

"  Not  ours.     It's  a  paper/'' 
j     "Emmie!" 

"  Well,  he  knows  now.  It's  an  awfully  nice  kind  of 
magazine.  Val  and  me  write  it.  It's  our  secret." 

"  Pretty  kind  of  secret  now  !"  said  Val.  "But  7  don't 
care  ;  I'm  going  away.  I  said  I  wouldn't  do  another." 

"But  finish  this  one.  Oh,  do  it,  just  a  single  solitary 
last  time,  dear  Val." 

"Do,  dear  Val,"  echoed  Ethan,  smiling. 

The  quick  blood  flew  into  the  girl's  face.  "  Dear  "  on 
his  lips  seemed  not  only  a  new  word  in  the  language  ;  it 
called  into  being  something  that  the  wide  world  lacked  be 
fore.  It  struck  Val  into  silence.  She  sat  and  looked  in 
her  plate. 

"  We  do  the  printing  in  father's  room  when  he's  well 
enough  to  be  out  digging  and  fussing  with  flowers,"  said 
Emmie. 

"It's  a  thing  we  started  ages  ago,  when  we  were  young," 
Val  explained.  "  It  amuses  Emmie." 

"  But  there's  no  reason  to  give  it  up  now,"  urged  the 
younger  girl.  "  We  thought  we'd  have  to  once  for  lack  of 
paper,"  she  said  to  Ethan.  "  Grandma  gave  us  only  half- 
sheets.  Then  Val  discovered  great-grandfather  Culvert's 
old  counting-house  books." 

"  How  did  you  do  that  ?" 

"They  were  in  the  closet  under  the  stairs," said  Val. 

"An'  Jerusha  and  Venie  and  most  everybody  thought 
there  was  a  ghost  there,"  added  Emmie,  with  a  certain  rever 
ence  in  her  voice.  "  Val  said  she  was  goin"  to  s<?e,  and 
that  was  how  we  found  all  that  jolly  paper  for  the  Comet.'3 

294 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

f '  Emmie  writes  most  of  the  poetry  and  all  of  the  stories  ; 
I  do  the  illustrations/7  said  Val. 

"And  the  conundrums  and  the  'Advice  to  Parents' 
column.  Oh,  Val,  what  would  happen  to  you  if  grandma 
ever  saw — " 

She  began  to  laugh. 

"  Miss  Val,"  said  Jerusha,  putting  her  head  in  at  the 
door,  "yo7  kin  run  so  fas',  honey,  an7  Miss  G7no  say  de  doc 
tor's  kerridge  is  a  stan'in7  at  de  Tibbses  do7;  will  yo7  say  de 
doctor's  wanted  yer  fur  Massa  John/7  Val  was  off  like  an 
arrow  from  a  bow  before  the  old  woman  had  finished. 

Dr.  Wharton  was  some  time  up-stairs.  Mrs.  Gano  and 
Ethan  were  both  in  the  sick-room.  The  verdict  was  that 
Mr.  Gano  was  not,  after  all,  dangerously  ill,  but  ought 
to  go  South  before  it  was  too  cold  for  him  to  travel,  and 
that,  at  all  events,  the  idea  of  going  to  New  York  in  No 
vember  was  absolutely  out  of  the  question — "sheer  mad 
ness." 

The  first  keen  edge  of  Val's  anxiety  wore  off  in  an  hour 
or  so.  Her  father  sent  for  her.  He  wasn't  really  even  so 
ill  as  the  doctor  made  out.  Still,  it  was  very  sadly,  and 
with  a  misgiving  foreign  to  her  experience,  that  she  agreed 
to  put  off  their  joint  expedition  till  the  spring. 

"And  meanwhile,77  said  her  father,  "since  you  are  am 
bitious  to  be  of  use,  it  would  be  well  if  you  took  a  more  ac 
tive  part  in  the  care  of  the  house.  Jerusha  is  very,  very 
old,  and—'7 

"  I  do  take  care  of  my  own  room." 

"Ah  yes,  but  there  are  other  things — 

"  Before  cousin  Ethan  came  I  used  to  help  Venus  01 
Saturdays  with  the  parlor." 

"  Before  Ethan  came  ?" 

"  Yes  ;  I  can't  do  it  while  he's  here.77 

"Why  not?" 

"  Oh,  it  looks  so  odd.  None  of  the  other  girls  do.  Head 
in  a  dust-cap,  and  horrid  black  hands  !  Grandma  wouldn't 
like  it  at  all,  not  while  we  have  company.77 

295 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

Val  seized  the  opportunity  afforded  by  her  father's  fit  of 
coughing  to  consider  her  audience  at  an  end. 

When  she  came  down -stairs  from  this  interview,  she 
found  Emmie  wandering  about  disconsolately.  Ethan 
closeted  with  grandma.  No  lessons  this  morning. 

"Come/' said  Val  to  Emmie,  clutching  for  diversion  at 
their  one  common  interest,  "  we'll  do  the  magazine." 

Emmie  got  the  red  and  black  ink,  the  line  and  the  broad 
nibbed  pens,  a  pile  of  paper  oddments  tied  with  string,  and 
a  gigantic  ledger,  with  one  of  its  massive  calf-skin  covers  torn 
off,  revealing  the  pages,  blank  at  this  end,  coarse  like  drawing- 
paper,  and  tough,  like  nothing  one  sees  in  these  flimsy  times 
— a  fabric  that,  besides  never  wearing  out,  had  been  found 
to  take  kindly  to  the  refinements  of  ornamental  printing. 

The  girls  established  themselves  in  the  dining-room. 
After  executing  the  title  of  Emmie's  story  in  florid  Old 
English  .lettering,  Val  did  a  pen-and-ink  sketch  of  the 
hero.  That  gallant  individual  had  started  out  rather  like 
Harry  Wilbur.  In  this  final  issue  he  appeared  with  Ethan 
Gano's  marked  and  clear-cut  profile,  having  borrowed  from 
that  gentleman  not  only  his  tall  elegance,  but  the  slight 
droop  of  the  shoulders  and  the  even  more  elusive  character 
istic  by  means  of  which,  despite  the  occasional  droop,  he 
never  lost  the  air  of  carrying  himself  well  in  some  indefina 
ble  way. 

"  Now,"  said  Val,  bestowing  a  finishing  touch. 

Whereupon,  with  much  gusto,  Emmie  began  to  read  the 
last  instalment  of  "  The  Brown  House  on  the  Hill,"  Val 
printing  at  dictation  in  a  rapid,  clear  italic.  The  minutes 
flew.  Venus  would  be  coming  in  presently  to  set  the  din 
ner-table.  The  clock,  chiming  the  hour,  masked  the  sound 
of  footsteps  approaching  from  the  opposite  direction.  Em 
mie  raised  her  voice  to  be  heard  by  the  printer  above  the 
dozen  strokes  of  noon  : 

"  Ever — and — anon — Archibald  —  Abalone  —  murmured 
—in — Editha's — ear  : — '  Angel — I — adore — thee.' ' 

"What  nonsense  is  that  you  are  reading?"  said  Mrs. 
Grano,  in  the  sudden  silence. 

290 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

The  two  girls  started  like  criminals.  Not  only  was  their 
grandmother  standing  at  the  door,  but  cousin  Ethan  was 
looking  in  at  their  discomfiture  over  her  shoulder. 

Val  obscured  the  Comet  with  the  blotter.  Emmie,,  grown 
very  pink,  had  thrust  Editha  and  Archibald  Abalone  under 
the  table. 

"  What  is  it  you  have  there,  Emmeline  ?" 

"  Just  a — just  a  thing  I  was  reading  Val." 

"Let  me  see  it." 

"No,  grandma,  please." 

"  Let  me  see  it." 

She  came  towering  into  the  room. 

"Grandma,"  said  Val,  turning  at  bay,  "it  isn't  meant 
for  you." 

"Emmeline,  hand  me  that  paper." 

Trembling,  the  younger  girl  brought  up  the  manuscript. 

"  It  isn't  honorable  to  read  things  that  aren't  meant  for 
you,"  said  Val,  starting  up  and  displacing  the  blotter. 

"Read  it  I" 

Mrs.  Gano  caught  "The  Brown  House"  out  of  the 
child's  hands  with  strange  excitement,  and  tore  it  across 
and  across. 

"  Oh,  oh  !"  wailed  Emmie,  with  fast-flowing  tears,  while 
Val  and  Ethan  stood  transfixed. 

There  was  "the  magazine"  in  full  sight,  flaunting  on  its 
cover  a  splashing  red  comet  with  a  fiery  tail.  Mrs.  Gano 
blazed  back  at  it  through  her  glasses  as  she  threw  down  the 
fragments  of  "  The  Brown  House." 

"  Whose  is  this  ?"  she  said,  opening  the  stitched  and 
folded  sheets  of  her  father's  ledger. 

"  Mine,"  said  Val,  laying  determined  hands  on  the  folio. 

"  I  perceive  part  of  it  to  be  unmistakably  yours,"  said 
Mrs.  Gano,  with  a  cutting  inflection  :  " '  Vale,  a  ballad 
sung  at  the  Grand  Opera  House  by  the  world-renowned  diva, 
Signorita  Val  Gano/'; 

VaFs  hands  had  dropped  from  the  paper  as  if  par 
alyzed. 

"Now,  this  verse  -  stringing  is  one  of  the  things  I  will 

297 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

not  have/'  said  the  old  woman,  with  a  curious  tragic  in 
tensity.  "  I've  seen  enough  of  young  girls  ruining  their 
figures,  and  their  eyesight,  and  their  prospects,  bending 
over  stuff  like  this,  till  it  becomes  a  craze,  and  they're  fit 
for  nothing  better." 

She  took  the  Comet  in  her  hands  and  tried  to  tear  it  up. 
The  ancient  paper  would  have  held  out  well  against  less 
fragile  fingers,  but  Ethan  did  not  realize  the  toughness  of 
the  Calvert  ledger.  He  hurried  forward. 

"Oh,  don't  tear  it.  Really,  really,  a  little  scribbling 
isn't  so  fatal." 

"I  don't  expect  you  to  think  so,  my  dear  Ethan,  when 
you  do  it  yourself  in  two  languages,  having  nothing  better 
to  do  in  either.  But  if  I'm  any  judge,  we've  had  enough 
of  it  in  this  family."  She  turned  upon  the  hushed,  awed 
Emmie.  "  Go  out  and  play,*'  she  commanded,  but  with  an 
air  of  saying,  "  Off  with  your  head  !  So  much  for  Buck 
ingham."  "  As  for  you  "—she  flashed  back  a  look  at  Val 
as  she  went  towards  the  fireplace—"  never  let  me  find  you 
wasting  your  youth  in  this  pernicious  fashion  again  as  long 
as  you  live  under  vuj  roof." 

She  put  the  Comet  in  the  lire,  and  with  the  poker  she 
pushed  it  down  among  the  red  -  hot  coals.  She  waited 
grimly  while  it  burned,  then,  without  another  word  or  look, 
she  went  back  to  the  long  room.  Ethan  had  been  peril 
ously  near  laughing  at  the  total  rout  of  the  two  malefactors. 
No  sooner  had  the  guardian  of  the  family  virtue  disap 
peared,  and  it  was  possible  openly  to  relieve  one's  feel 
ings,  than  Val  began  striding  back  and  forth  with  clinched 
hands  and  a  look  of  concentrated  rage. 

He  was  rather  startled  at  the  transformation  in  the  sunny 
face.  It  was  convulsed,  ugly  with  passion. 

"I  won't  stand  it;  no,  I  wouldn't  stand  it  from  the 
Angel  Gabriel !"  She  took  a  turn  up  and  down  the  room 
and  burst  out  afresh  :  "  She,  Pallas  Athene  I  She,  patron 
of  the  arts  !  It's  this  sort  of  thing"— she  stopped  before 
her  cousin  with  tragic  eyes — "it's  this  sort  of  thing  that 
has  embittered  my  youth  !" 

298 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

' '  What !"  he  said,,  holding  fast  to  his  gravity.  "  Has 
she  done  this  before  ?" 

Val  shook  her  head,  and  then,  in  a  stifled  voice  : 

( '  The  Comet  has  been  kept  dark,,  but  there  are  other 
things — things  I  really  care  about/7 

"Is  there  something  you  care  about  more  than  about 
writing  ?" 

" Writing  f  she  echoed,  with  limitless  scorn.  "I  don't 
care  that  about  writing.  It  just  does  to  fill  in.  But  the 
way  she  behaves  about  the  Comet  is  just  a  sample.  I  really 
thought  she  was  getting  to  be  more  liberal-minded.  It's 
a  long  time  since  we've  had  a  terrible  scene  like  this  ;  but 
it  just  shows  you."  She  turned  away  and  strode  up  and 
down.  "The  only  thing  she  ever  let  me  do  was  to  take 
drawing  lessons  ;  and  the  only  thing  she  ever  took  my 
part  about  was  in  defending  me  from  learning  cooking.  But 
do  you  think  /  ever  had  piano  lessons?  No!  Do  you 
think  I've  ever  had  a  private  singing  lesson  in  my  life  ? 
No  !  Do  jou.  know  what  that  means  to  me  ?  No — because 
the  piano's  kept  locked,  or  else  I'm  made  to  sing  as  if  I 
were  ashamed  of  myself,  and  you  haven't  a  notion  that  I've 
got  a  voice  that  would  make  a  singer's  fortune.  Now,  have 
you  ?" 

"N— no." 

"  Course  not.     How  should  you  ?" 

"I  suppose,"  he  said,  "  they  naturally  don't  want  you  to 
face  the  hardships  of — " 

"As  if  we  didn't  face  hardships  at  home.  Have  you 
any  notion  how  poor  we  are?  I  don't  mean  holes  in  the 
kitchen  and  rain  through  the  roof — who  cares  about  that  ? 
We're  so  poor" — she  advanced  upon  him  step  by  step — 
"  that  we  can't  have  proper  clothes,  we  can't  have  proper 
fires,  and,  except  when  you're  here,  we  don't  have  proper 
food.  And  me  with  a  voice  of  gold  ! — so  people  say.  What's 
the  good  of  a  voice  of  gold  with  a  grandmother  like  that  ?" 
She  pointed  a  shaking  finger  of  scorn  in  the  direction  of 
the  long  room.  A  black  face  was  put  shyly  in  at  the  op 
posite  door.  "Here's  Venus  to  set  the  table." 

299 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

Val  tumbled  down  from  her  climax  and  stalked  miser 
ably  out.  Ethan  followed  her. 

"  Come  to  the  drawing-room/'  he  whispered,  in  the  passage. 

"Parlor,  I  suppose  you  mean." 

"  Yes,  parlor." 

-What  for?" 

"We  can  talk  there." 

They  pushed  open  the  door. 

"She's  left  the  key!"  cried  Val,  springing  towards  the 
piano. 

"  So  she  has,"  he  admitted,  with  less  enthusiasm. 

"  That's  for  your  sake.  Cousin  Ethan,  you  could  try  my 
voice  if  you  liked." 

"Of  course,"  he  said,  with  misgiving. 

How  was  he  to  let  her  down  from  the  dizzy  height  of  her 
illusion  without  hurting  her  cruelly  or  stultifying  himself? 
The  voice  that  had  joined  in  "  Maid  of  Athens"  had  been 
so  unremarkable,  he  could  not  recall  anything  about  it  save 
that,  unwillingly,  she  had  sung.  She  opened  the  piano. 
He  saw  with  pitying  amusement  how  her  lingers  shook 
upon  the  ancient  rosewood. 

"  I  am  a  mezzo-soprano,"  she  said.  "  I'll  show  you  my 
range  first." 

And  she  proceeded  to  do  so,  her  voice  as  shaky  at  the  be 
ginning  as  her  hands,  but  steadying  itself  on  the  second 
note,  rising  slowly,  with  a  kind  of  conscious  pride,  swelling 
audaciously  rich,  mounting  higher  and  clearer,  leaping  at 
the  top  notes  like  some  spirit  of  delight  sounding  silver 
trumpets  to  the  sun. 

Ethan  stood  staring  when  she  finished. 

"Either  something's  wrong  with  my  ears,  or  else  you 
have  got  a  wonderful  voice  !'' 

"  Oh,  cousin  Ethan,  cousin  Ethan!" 

She  caught  his  hands,  and  pressed  them  in  an  ecstasy  of 
relief  and  gladness.  lie  was  moved  himself  when  he  saw 
her  happy  eyes  were  wet. 

"I  didn't  hear  one  of  those  notes  last  night.  What  did 
yon  do  with  your  voice  then  ?" 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  Grandma — she'd  put  down  her  foot — soft  pedal — she's 
done  that  all  my  life." 

"  Sing  something — Fll  play  for  you." 

He  swept  her  off  the  piano-stool. 

"I  don't  know  much  but  ballads." 

She  pulled  the  yellowed  sheets  out  of  the  stand,  wonder 
ing  as  she  turned  them  over  which,  if  any,  of  these  songs 
he  had  heard  sung  by  great  artists.  She  was  on  the  point 
of  asking  him,  when,  "  Oh," she  said,  jumping  up,  "here's 
this  from  f  Trovatore,'  "  and  she  set  the  music  before  him 
with  the  firm  intention  of  rivalling  that  Patti  people  made 
such  a  fuss  about.  She  sang  the  English  words,  "  Ah,  I've 
sighed  to  rest  me,"  and  not  without  a  certain  largeness  of 
effect  intensely  satisfying  to  herself. 

"  There's  no  doubt,"  he  said,  at  the  end,  "  that  you  have 
a  voice.  You,  naturally,  don't  in  the  least  know  how  to 
use  it ;  but  it's  there." 

This  was  not  what  she  had  expected — mfact,  it  was  a  blow ; 
for,  in  spite  of  her  old  desire  to  be  taught,  she  looked  tow 
ards  a  singing-master  chiefly  as  a  personal  influence  to  help 
her  into  the  operatic  field.  She  felt  it  a  grievance  against 
her  family  that  she  had  had  no  early  advantages,  and  yet 
she  had  thought  it  more  than  probable  that  genius  could 
do  without  them.  But  what  if  cousin  Ethan  was  right? 
All  the  more  need  not  to  lose  time. 

"The  question  is,"  she  said,  "  What's  to  be  done  ?" 

"  Done  ?" 

"Yes." 

It  flashed  over  her  in  the  pause  that  he  might  think  she 
was  hinting  that  he  should  defray  the  expense  of  her  train 
ing,  and  this  suddenly  seemed  as  repulsive  to  reason  and  to 
dignity  as  if  five  months  before  she  had  not  calmly  sug 
gested  it  herself.  It  was  Heaven's  own  mercy  that  let 
ter  had  got  lost  !  She  must  have  been  crazy  when  she 
wrote  it. 

"  Of  course,"  stya  said,  "  my  family  can't  do  much,  and" 
—looking  at  him  half  apologetically,  and  feeling  the  necessity 
to  forestall  him — "  I  couldn't  allow  any  one  else  to  do  more 

301 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

than  give  me  advice  and  letters  of  introduction.  I  have  my 
plans  all  laid — but  now  my  father's  ill." 

"  What  plans  ?" 

"  I  was  going  to  New  York  with  my  father  next  month  to 
look  over  the  field  " — at  his  look  of  incredulity,  she  added  : 
'•'operatic  field.  As  I  haven't  any  money,  and  can't  possibly 
borrow,  I  must  find  a  way  to  be  a  chorus-girl  first." 

"What  an  idea!" 

He  got  up  from  the  piano,  and  walked  the  length  of  the 
room  and  back. 

"A  very  good  idea." 

"  My  dear  Val- 

He  stopped. 

"No,  cousin  Ethan'' — she  motioned  away  his  imaginary 
offer — "the  Ganos  don't  borrow  money,  they  do  without." 

He  smiled  a  little. 

"  Did  grandmamma  approve  of  this  chorus-girl  plan  ?" 

"  Of  course  she  wouldn't.     It's  only  father  who  knows." 

"  Does  he  approve  ?" 

"  Well,  not  to  say  approve,  but  he  knows  it's  no  use  ob 
jecting." 

"  Do  you  know,  I  don't  approve  of  it  either." 

She  sat  down  on  the  piano-stool,  looking  at  him  doubt 
fully.  Was  this  an  offer  of  a  million  in  disguise  ?  or  could 
it  be— 

"  Yon  don't  mean,"  she  said,  "  that  you  won't  give  me 
any  letters  of  introduction  ?" 

(<  I  mean,  little  cousin,  that  I'll  do  all  in  my  power  to 
keep  you  from  the  hardships  and  the  hurts  of  public  life." 

lie  put  a  hand  on  her  shoulder,  and  was  looking  down 
upon  her.  She  opened  her  lips,  but  no  sound  came. 

"  There  won't  be  any  lack  in  your  life  of  beautiful  and 
worth-while  things  ;  don't  spoil  it  all — don't  spoil  yourself 
by  being  too  eager." 

"  Y — you  don't  understand,"  she  faltered,  with  a  suffocat 
ing  sense  of  throbbing  in  her  throat. 

"'Oh  yes,  I  do.  I  understand  a  lot.*  Promise  me  you 
won't  take  any  steps  about  this  without  letting  me  know." 

303 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

She  shook  her  head,  and  tried  to  draw  from  under  the 
thrilling  touch  of  his  hand. 

"I  shall  not  let  you  go  till  you  promise." 

The  other  hand  had  fallen  on  her  other  shoulder.  It 
was  as  if  chains  were  being  hung  upon  her.  But  why 
wasn't  she  struggling  ?  Why — why  was  bondage  so  sweet? 

"  I'm  waiting.     Promise  I"  said  the  masterful  voice. 

"  I — promise." 

The  tumult  in  her  heart  made  the  clang  of  the  dinner- 
bell  sound  as  if  it  were  ringing  in  some  far-off  place. 

"  What — what  was  it  I  promised  ?"  she  asked  herself 
again  and  again. 


CHAPTER  XXI 

IT  struck  Mrs.  Gano  the  next  day,  as  they  were  ont  driv 
ing,  that  Val  was  unusually  subdued.  She  seemed  to  see 
nothing  that  they  passed,  hear  nothing  that  was  said.  But 
it  could  not  be  said  she  looked  unhappy.  And  Ethan  was 
in  excellent  spirits.  Emmie  was  bowing  right  and  left, 
bowing  with  that  air  she  had  rapidly  acquired,  and  was 
sedulously  cultivating,  a  royal-condescension-to-the-crowd 
kind  of  bow. 

"  Who  is  that  ?"  asked  Mrs.  Gano,  seeing  Emmie's  pan 
tomime,  and  seeing,  too,  that  Val  had  made  no  sign. 

"Mr.  Peter  Hall. " 

"  What !  Not  the  young  Pete  Hall  that  I  recommended 
to  Blakistons  ?" 

"  Yes'm,"  said  Emmie,  meekly. 

"  Why  do  you  bow  to  him  ?" 

"  Oh,  I  know  him." 

"  We  all  know  him,  but  that's  no  reason  you  should  rec 
ognize  him  out  of  the  store." 

"I  don't  see  why—"  began  Emmie. 

"  I've  told  you  before,  you  do  not  know  such  persons 
except  in  their  capacity  of  salesmen." 

"  He  bowed  to  me,  grandma." 

"  Impertinence  !  Teach  him  a  lesson  next  time.  Don't 
notice  him." 

Mrs.  Gano's  point  of  view  not  only  seemed  to  Val  quite 
natural,  but  this  very  same  conversation,  with  some  im 
material  variation,  had  taken  place  too  often  to  merit 
notice.  Cousin  Ethan,  however,  was  looking  from  one  to 
the  other  in  frank  amazement. 

" 'Tisn't  as  if  Peter  Hall  was  a  servant,"  said  Emmie, 

304 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

appealingly.  "  Fve  given  np  bowing  to  the  Otways'  coach 
man/' 

"  Isn't  all  this  very  undemocratic  ?"  Ethan  asked. 

"  It's  a  most  essential  consideration  in  a  democracy/' 

"  But  do  you  realize  that  it  shows  a  degree  of  class  prej 
udice  that  doesn't  exist  in  the  older,  the  monarchical 
countries  ?" 

"  Quite  possible.  Where  the  differences  are  broadly  and 
indelibly  stamped,  there's  no  need  to  remind  anybody  that 
they  exist." 

"Three  months  ago/'  said  Ethan,  meditatively,  "I 
should  have  called  such  considerations  absolutely  un- 
American.  However,  a  season  at  Newport,  not  to  speak 
of  glimpses  of  life  in  the  Boston  clubs  and  on  Beacon  Hill, 
have  helped  to  readjust  my  views.  Still,  I  didn't  think  I 
should  find  out  here  in  the  West " — some  quick  look  in 
Mrs.  Gano's  face  made  him  modify — "  out  here  in  the  Great 
Middle  States— 

"  You  forget  your  father's  family  are  Southerners,  root 
and  branch.  But  as  to  that,  you  will  leave  distinctions 
behind  when  you  reach  heaven,  not  before.  And  even 
there  we  are  told  one  star  differeth  from  another  star  in 
glory." 

"Well,"  said  Ethan,  smiling,  "I  only  wish  I'd  brought 
Drouet." 

"  A  friend  of  yours  ?" 

"Well,  yes,  if  I  may  be  so  bold.  A  more  necessary 
friend  than  most.  I  rather  missed  him  at  first.  Drouet  is 
my  valet." 

"There  would  have  been  accommodation  for  him." 

"You  see,  I  didn't  know.  I  thought  you  would  have 
been  scandalized." 

"  I  don't  see  why  you  should  think  that.  My  father 
never  travelled  without  his  body-servant.  You  must  have 
had  the  Tall  mad  ges  in  mind.  They,  you  know,  thought 
themselves  wiser  than  the  prophets.  There  was  no  need 
of  hewers  of  wood  and  drawers  of  water.  Every  one  would 
be  free  and  equal  once  black  slavery  was  abolished.  Child- 
u  305 


TIIK    OPKX    Q  TEST  I  ON 

ishness  !  Throe-fourths  of  the  human  race  is  in  bondage 
to  the  other  fourth.  Whether  your  servant  is  a  French 
man  and  white,  or  an  African  and  black,  the  root  of  the 
matter  is  the  same.  We  exact  menial  services  of  our  in 
feriors,  being  of  the  dominant  race." 

The  carriage  drew  up  before  the  ruinous  Fort,  and  "the 
dominant  race "  got  out,  while  two  black  faces  and  a 
colored  turban  went  scuttling  back  to  the  rear.  John 
Gauo,  in  a  shabby  old  coat  with  a  tear  in  the  sleeve,  was 
standing  on  a  step-ladder,  lopping  off  twigs  with  a  huge 
pair  of  garden  shears. 

"John — John!  What  a  mad  proceeding!  You  will 
take  your  death  !"  cried  his  mother  from  the  carriage 
window. 

The  gentleman  so  addressed  climbed  carefully  down  the 
step-ladder,  while  Emmie  tumbled  out  of  the  carriage  and 
ran  to  meet  him. 

"What  do  you  think,  father?"  she  said,  confidingly. 
"  Cousin  Ethan's  got  a  valet." 

"A  what  ?" 

"A  valet,"  whispered  Emmie. 

"  Valet !     What  does  he  want  a  valet  for  ?" 

In  vain  Emmie  squeezed  his  arm.  He  spoke  in  a  loud, 
astonished  tone. 

"  Ah  ha  !  I  felt  it  wouldn't  do  to  produce  Drouet  in 
New  Plymouth,"  said  Ethan,  who  was  conducting  Mrs. 
Gano  to  the  porch. 

"  Well,"  answered  his  uncle,  dryly,  "  if  you  were  too  old 
or  too  ill  to  wait  on  yourself,  I  should  understand  it." 

"  Do  come  in  out  of  the  draughts,  John,  and  don't  stand 
talking  nonsense.  Your  father  had  his  body-servant  be 
fore  he  was  either  old  or  ill,  and  so  did  my  father." 

"  That  was  in  the  antebellum  days,  before  men  realized 
they  couldn't  oppress  their  fellows  with  impunity." 

"  What  do  yon  mean  ?"  asked  Mrs.  Gano,  turning  sharp 
ly  on  her  son. 

"I  mean  that  if  our  forefathers  had  realized  what  an 
awful  inheritance  they  were  laving  up  for  their  children  in 

306 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

the  negro  problem,  they  would  have  gone  without  their 
valets  and  left  the  negro  in  his  native  wilds." 

"  Oh,  if  you  only  mean  that  the  initial  mistake  was  in 
having  the  shiftless  creatures  here  at  all,  I  agree.  The 
negro  enslaved  was  a  care  and  a  drag  on  the  South  ;  the 
negro  free  is  a  menace  to  all  America." 

She  opened  the  door  of  the  long  room  and  rang  for 
Venus  to  take  off  her  shoes. 

"  Yes,  the  Color  Question,"  said  John  Gano,  sitting  down 
heavily  on  one  of  the  fleur-de-lis  chairs — "the  Color 
Question  is  just  one  of  the  forms  of  ferociously  usurious 
interest  one  generation  has  to  pay  on  the  debts  incurred 
by  another.  The  world  learns  its  lessons  with  infinite 
pains.  The  same  thing  happens  over  and  over  again,  and 
no  one  raises  a  finger." 

He  sat  gazing  at  some  impending  peril  with  prophetic 
gloom. 

"  What  is  happening  over  again  ?"  asked  Ethan,  divest 
ing  himself  of  his  outer  coat. 

"The  importation  of  ignorant  debased  foreigners  to  do 
the  work  that  the  American  born  not  only  won't  do  him 
self,  but  won't,  in  his  haste  to  get  rich,  allow  to  remain 
undone.  Why  do  the  offscourings  of  the  earth  flock  to 
America  ?  Not  because  it's  any  longer  the  New  World. 
They  don't  go  to  Australia  or  South  Africa  in  the  same 
numbers.  They  come  here  because  the  American  born  is 
more  of  an  arrant  fool  and  snob  than  any  creature  God 
permits  to  breathe.  Hardly  any  one  so  poor  but  he  will 
pay  the  highest  wages  for  the  worst  alien  service." 

"Father  !"  Val,  half-way  up-stairs,  came  running  back 
to  her  country's  rescue.  "Cousin  Ethan  won't  under 
stand  you  are  just  arguing.  Father  doesn't  really  think 
Americans  are  snobs." 

"Yes,  snobs  of  the  worst  kind  !  What  respect  have  we 
for  the  laboring  man  ?  What  do  we  know  or  practise  of 
healthy  German  industry,  of  the  thrift  of  the  French  ?" 

"I  thought  our  industries  were  our  strong  point." 

"Industries,  yes — not  our  industry.  We  can  establish 

307 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

mills  and  manufactories,  and  then  get  ship-loads  of  Teu 
tons  and  of  Irish  to  come  over  and  work  them." 

"If  they'd  only  be  content  with  that,"  said  Ethan,  "but 
they  end  by  working  our  municipalities  too  and  running 
our  country." 

"They  always  do,"  said  John  Gano,  shaking  his  fore 
finger  in  the  air.  "They  always  have!"  With  that  he 
brought  his  clinched  fist  down  on  his  knee.  "If  you 
can't  hoe  your  row  yourself,  don't  call  in  a  man  to  help  you. 
He'll  end  by  helping  himself.  You'll  have  saved  the  hoe 
ing  and  lost  the  row.  But  the  average  American  won't  do 
anything  himself  that  lie  can  get  another  man  to  do  for 
him." 

No  wonder,  thought  Ethan,  that  the  foreign  visitor  to 
these  shores  has  such  difficulty  in  classifying  American 
opinion.  Here,  under  the  same  roof,  within  the  bonds  of 
the  closet  kinship,  were  to  be  heard  the  old  views  of  "the 
dominant  race"  from  Mrs.  Gano,  and  here  was  her  own 
son  railing. 

"Nobody  is  content  any  more  to  work  his  own  land  or 
learn  a  trade  ;  everybody  must  scramble  for  the  big  money 
prizes,  the  privilege  of  being  an  employer  of  labor." 

It  was  a  deed  of  some  daring  to  interrupt  the  flow  of 
masculine  talk,  but  Val  sat  down  on  the  bottom  step  of  the 
stairs,  saying  firmly  : 

"Americans  can't  help  being  ambitious.  They  know 
there's  a  great  deal  to  do." 

"  There  is  a  great  deal  to  be  done  ;  but  the  American 
has  mistaken  notions  as  to  what.  The  American  artisan 
thinks  his  son  must  aim  at  being  a  boss,  if  not  being  Pres 
ident.  The  farmer  thinks  he's  doing  his  share  when  he 
hires  hands  and  sends  his  own  boys  to  swell  the  stream  of 
clerks  and  town-strugglers.  The  infection  seized  on  the 
women  about  thirty  years  ago." 

"Stick  up  for  us,"  whispered  Val's  voice  behind  Ethan. 

"The  result  is,"  her  father  went  on,  "it's  harder  to 
find  in  America  to-day  a  good  cook  or  chambermaid  than 
to  find  a  woman  musician,  novelist,  linguist,  or  painter." 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"Say  something,"  admonished  the  low  voice  from  the 
bottom  step. 

"I  imagine,"  the  perfidious  Ethan  remarked,  "that 
there  are  accomplished  persons  on  both  sides  the  sea  who 
tire  ready  to  excel  in  any  art  except  the  art  of  being  of 
use." 

"  Exactly.  These  people  no  doubt  exist  everywhere,  but 
they  should  be  swept  off  the  face  of  America."  Val 
looked  out  anxiously  past  the  sheltering  form  of  her  cous 
in.  "Farmers',  tradesmen's  daughters  all  over  the  land 
are  giving  up  house-work" — Val  withdrew  her  head  and 
sat  in  obscurity — "giving  up  field  and  dairy  work.  Their 
foolish  fathers  buy  them  pianos,  buy  them  novels  ;  and 
able-bodied  young  women  idle  away  their  days  in  rocking- 
chairs,  breeding  discontent  and  disease." 

Val  appeared  to  be  making  preparations  to  retire. 

"You  think, "asked  Ethan,  "there  is  any  application  in 
the  fact — to — a  people  of  another  class  ?" 

"Most  assuredly.  What  the  ignorant  ignorantly  de 
spise,  we  must  elevate.  We  must  show  them  the  bottom 
less  vulgarity  of  their  view."  The  restive  movement  on 
the  bottom  step  augmented  his  ire.  "I  assure  you  the 
market  cries  aloud  for  house-keepers,  nurses,  laundresses, 
sempstresses.  We  are  not  in  need  of  any  more  poetesses, 
department  clerks,  singers." 

He  had  got  up  and  was  glowering  unmistakably  at  the 
girl  who  had  risen  from  the  bottom  step. 

"It's  too  bad,  father,  your  going  back  on  my  singing, 
just  because  I  forgot  to  mend  your  coat.  I  thought  you 
were  an  invalid  in  bed.  I  didn't  expect  you  to  clirnb  trees 
to-day." 

"To-day  has  got  nothing  to  do  with  it,  although  I  am 
surprised  and  disappointed  that  you  want  your  grandmoth 
er  to  engage  some  raw  Irish  girl — 

"  Only  while  we  have  company." 

"  Company  !"  he  said,  bristling  more  than  ever.  "  What 
can  '  company'  get  but  profit  out  of  seeing  that  WB  think 
nobly  of  work  ;  that  we're  ready  to  do  our  part  towards 

309 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

turning  domestic  and  industrial  service  from  an  ugly 
slavery  into  a  beautiful  and  noble  privilege." 

"  Come,  Emmie,"  said  Val,  "  let's  get  our  things  off." 

The  two  girls  simultaneously  took  to  their  heels.  John 
Gano  leaned  back  in  the  chair,  coughing  feebly,  all  his  an 
imation  spent. 

"  She  has  set  her  heart  on  my  taking  her  East  to  learn 
singing,"  he  said,  in  a  lo\v,  dispirited  voice.  ''I've  been 
feeling  to-day  I  may  never  go  East  again." 

"  You  are  not  strong  enough  just  yet,"  began  Ethan. 

"  I  wish  Val  would  get  over  this  craze  about  opera,  es 
pecially  if  I'm  not  here.  I've  been  thinking  a  great  deal 
about  it  to-day.  If  she  could  take  up  some  of  the  duties 
here —  He  looked  round  helplessly,  as  if  to  find  some 
thing  she  might  with  advantage  begin  upon. 

"  Oh,  we  must  get  the  opera  idea  out  of  her  head.  I  am 
quite  of  your  opinion  there." 

"  Ha,  really  ?"  said  John  Gano,  with  a  relieved,  almost 
incredulous  air.  "You  think  there's  something  in  what  I 
say  ?" 

"Indeed  I  do." 

" Mofit  assuredly."  He  got  up  with  renewed  energy. 
44  I'll  tell  her  that  the  women  who  take  up  the  despised  craft 
of  home-making  and  home-keeping  will  be  not  only  the 
true  artists  of  the  future,  they'll  be  the  only  order  of  work 
ing-women,  never  in  want  of  a  place." 

As  Ethan  went  to  his  room  he  indulged  the  cynical  sus 
picion  that  his  uncle  had  some  definite  vision  of  the  par 
ticular  home  that  Val  was  to  labor  for  and  ornament,  and 
it  was  not  the  Fort.  AVell  ?  He  smiled.  Pshaw  !  "Am  I 
growing  old,  that  a  little  school-girl  should  get  hold  of  me 
after  all  my  escapes  ?"  For  so  much  had  his  social  experi 
ence  warped  him  that  he  seldom  thought  of  marriage  now, 
save  as  of  something  others  plotted  and  which  he  must 
frustrate  and  elude. 

Val !  He  laughed  to  himself.  Absurd  !  But  his  face 
had  little  amusement  in  it,  and  less  irony  than  he  would 
have  credited.  "  The  older  men  grow,"  he  said  to  him- 

310 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

self,  "the  more  the  fainter -hearted  among  them  shrink 
from  age,  the  more  they  worship  youth.  Now,  if  I  were 
fifty  I  might  be  in  danger." 

Going  down,  after  writing  some  letters,  an  hour  or  so 
later,  he  heard  "the  little  school -girl"  coming  behind  him, 
and  then  stopping  suddenly. 

"That  yon,  Val?"  He  stood  waiting.  No  answer. 
She  had  gone  back  into  her  room.  lie  stood  stamping  his 
letters  under  the  hall  lamp. 

Val's  head  presently  peered  down  from  the  top  of  the 
stair. 

"  Yes,  Fm  here,"  said  Ethan,  provokingly. 

"  I'm  looking  for  one  of  the  servants/'  Val  said,  descend 
ing  with  dignity. 

Ethan  looked  up,  laughing  at  her  over  the  banisters. 

"  What  makes  you  look  so  solemn  ?"  he  asked. 

"My  sister's  got  a  sore  throat,  and  I  can't  find  the  stuff 
for  a  compress/' 

"No  use  telling  me  you're  such  a  sympathetic  sister  as 
you  make  out.  What's  the  real  matter  ?" 

Ethan  had  come  down-stairs,  intending  to  be  more  dis 
creet  than  ever  in  the  future.  De  Poincy  was  no  doubt 
right — even  here  it  was  necessary  to  be  en  garde.  With 
this  idea  dragged  well  into  the  foreground  again,  what 
demon  of  perversity  made  him  lift  a  hand  above  the  ban 
isters  and  hold  the  girl's  fingers  fast  to  the  polished  rail  ? 
It  was  the  first  time  he  had  touched  her.  He  was  rather 
startled  at  the  commotion  set  up  in  his  own  nerves  by  the 
trifling  action,  but  it  was  mainly,  he  assured  himself,  the 
reflex  of  the  evident  agitation  of  the  girl.  She  had 
dropped  her  eyes,  and  he  saw  her  upper  lip  tremble. 

"What's  the  real  matter?"  he  repeated,  letting  go  her 
hand,  not  all  of  a  sudden,  but  drawing  his  own  across  it 
lingeringly  ;  "I  thought  you  were  always  happy." 

"Happy  !"  she  said,  making  a  gallant  effort  to  recover 
her  usual  manner.  "Well,  it's  nobody's  fault  if  I  am/' 

"  Now  that  I  come  to  look  at  you,  I  believe  you  are  hap 
py,  all  the  same/' 

311 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  Course  I  am  ;  but  it's  only  because  I  was  born  that  way 
and  can't  get  out  o'  the  habit."  She  came  on  down-stairs. 

"  Your  father  was  quite  right,  you  know,  in  what  he  said 
this  afternoon.'' 

"Oh,  he  didn't  really  mean  it.  It  was  partly  just  argu 
ing — father  does  so  love  arguing — and  partly  because  Em 
mie  told  on  you.  I've  been  saying  she  deserved  to  have  a 
sore  throat." 

"  Told  on  me  ?" 

The  supper-bell  rang. 

"  Yes,"  said  Val,  when  she  could  make  herself  heard  ; 
"let  out  that  you  had  a  valet.  Emmie's  so  indiscreet.  It 
was  all  right  to  tell  grandma,  she  likes  splendor,  but  Em 
mie  might  have  known  father  would  shy  awfully  at  a  valet. 
Sh  !  here  he  is  !" 

Ethan  went  and  sat  by  Emmie  a  little  while  after  supper 
that  evening.  They  were  great  friends,  these  two ;  but 
somehow  Ethan's  conversation  flagged.  For  no  discovera 
ble  reason  he  had  fallen  into  the  clutch  of  one  of  those  tits 
of  gloomy  silence  that  before  he  came  to  the  Fort  had 
been  growing  in  frequency  and  in  power  to  cripple  and  to 
numb  his  spirit.  He  had  just  given  Emmie  an  old  silver 
pounce-box  that  had  belonged  to  some  dead  and  gone  Tull- 
madge,  and  that  Ethan  for  years  had  carried  in  his  pocket. 
Emmie  was  to  keep  menthol  in  it,  Ethan  said,  and  to  sniff 
the  aromatic  remedy  through  the  open-work  inner  lid  of 
gold.  Emmie  was  delighted  at  this  attention  on  the  part 
of  her  cousin,  but  she  glanced  up  now  and  then  from  her 
occupation  of  crumbling  the  menthol  into  the  tiny  recep 
tacle,  keenly  conscious  of  Ethan's  black-browed  preoccu 
pation. 

"Why  do  you  think  so  much  ?"  she  said. 

"Heaven  forfend  !     I  never  think." 

"  Oh  yes,  you  do — unless  Val's  here.  Grandma  has  often 
said,"  she  continued,  with  her  little  air  of  superiority,  "no 
one  can  think  when  Val's  in  the  room." 

"Ah,"  said  Ethan  to  himself,  "that's  at  the  bottom  of 
my  affection  for  Val." 

312 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

If  be  was  unconscious  of  any  change  in  her  enlivening 
influence  in  the  days  following,  it  did  not  escape  Mrs. 
Gano  that  VaPs  humor  was  more  capricious  than  her  family 
had  been  accustomed  to  find  it.  The  old  on-looker  at  the 
game  could  not,  of  course,  know  that  alone  with  Etban 
the  girl  was  embarrassed,  breathless,  almost  terrified,  and 
yet  deliciously  happy.  She  was  no  sooner  alone  with  him 
than  she  wanted  to  run  away — no  sooner  had  she  run  away 
than  she  wanted  to  go  back.  When  he  was  present,  she 
was  often  in  the  wildest  spirits  ;  when  he  went  out  of  the 
room,  he  seemed  to  take  her  soul  away  with  him.  She  sat 
silent,  helpless,  till  he  came  again.  She  seemed  to  have 
lost  her  hitherto  unfailing  gusto  for  games  and  outings. 
She  saw  as  little  as  possible  of  Julia  and  of  Harry  Wilbur. 
She  did  her  lessons  absent-mindedly,  and  was  not  much 
heard  from  in  the  general  family  talks.  Val  !  Who  had 
never  found  it  possible  before  to  realize  that  young  peo 
ple  should  be  seen  and  not  heard  !  Mrs.  Gano  had  not 
lived  seventy  years  in  the  world  for  nothing.  She  saw 
enough  of  the  state  of  affairs  to  feel  sore  at  heart  for 
the  poor  foolish  little  girl,  who  was  groping  her  way 
through  her  first  great  initiation  into  the  mystery  of  mys 
teries. 

For  all  Mrs.  Gano's  pride  in,  and  affection  for,  Ethan, 
she  felt  scant  patience  at  his  lingering  on  at  the  Fort,  amus 
ing  himself  with  VaFs  oddities  and  adorations,  carelessly 
absorbing  her  generous  capacity  for  hero-worship,  build 
ing  himself  a  shrine  in  her  imagination  before  turning  his 
back  upon  the  Fort,  perhaps  for  another  twenty  years. 
It  was  plain  to  Mrs.  Gano  that  Ethan  was  a  person  exer 
cising  no  little  fascination  upon  womankind  ;  equally  plain 
was  it  that  the  school -girl  worship  of  his  little  country 
cousin  was  in  the  nature  of  a  smiling  incident  that  could 
not  arrest  him  long. 

"  What  an  absurd  infant  you  are  !"  she  had  heard  him 
exclaim. 

"  Fm  not  in  the  very  least  like  an  infant,"  Val  had  re 
torted. 

813 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  Well,  you  are  quite  the  youngest  person  I've  ever 
known/'  he  assured  her. 

As  Val  sat  at  her  lessons  in  the  long  room  of  u  morn 
ing,  Mrs.  Gano  had  no  need  to  look  out  herself  to  see,  or 
to  ask,  who  was  passing  under  her  windows.  If,  at  the 
morning's  end,  the  door  behind  them  opened,  she  saw  in 
Val's  face  if  it  were  Ethan  coming  in.  Old  Jerusha  was 
right — the  face  was  like  a  lamp,  and  like  an  open  book  the 
young  heart  underneath  its  light. 

"John,"  said  Mrs.  Gano,  at  the  beginning  of  the  next 
week,  "  has  Ethan  told  you  how  long  be  means  to  stay  ?" 

"No." 

"  H'm  !  Well,  I  think  you  should  talk  to  him  about 
taking  life  more  seriously.  He  ought  not  to  idle  away  his 
youth  as  he's  doing." 

"We  can't  complain  that  he's  idled  much  of  it  away 
here  hitherto." 

"  Why  doesn't  he  prepare  himself  for  some  profession  ?" 

"  He's  done  a  good  deal  of  preparing.  He  tells  me  he's 
going  into  politics." 

"  Humph  !  politics.     When  ?" 

"  Well,  I  dare  say  when  he  goes  East  again." 

"I  don't  approve  of  idle  men." 

"No,"  said  John  Gano,  with  some  asperity,  "I  know 
you  don't." 

Body-servants  and  "splendor"  were  all  very  well,  but  it 
was  not  pleasing  to  Mrs.  Gano  that  .her  only  grandson 
should  be  regarded  even  temporarily  in  the  light  of  that 
character,  looked  at  askance  even  in  the  old  unenterpris 
ing  South,  "the  gentleman  of  leisure."  In  her  heart  she 
thought  it  undignified  that  Ethan  should  spend  so  many 
mornings  playing  tennis  ;  that  he  should  laugh  and  sing 
with  Julia  Otway  (another  victim,  plainly)  as  though 
amusement  were  the  end  of  existence.  Harry  Wilbur,  too, 
who  had  begun  with  a  good  honest  detestation  of  the  vis 
itor  at  the  Fort,  was  at  the  end  of  three  weeks  one  of  his 
most  ardent  friends. 

"  The  Wilburs  want  cousin  Ethan  to  go  and  dine  with 

314 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

them  on  Sunday,"  Emmie  reported.  "They  simply  love 
him.  I  don't  wonder.  He's  going  to  get  Hurry  Wilbur 
something  to  do  in  Boston.'' 

"Humph  !"  ejaculated  Mrs.  Gano  ;  "when  is  he  going 
to  get  himself  something  to  do  ?" 

Emmie  and  her  cousin  continued  the  best  possible 
friends.  No  cloud  upon  that  relation,  at  all  events.  He 
had  promised  to  teach  her  to  ride,  but  Emmie  was  not 
strong  enough  for  violent  exercise,  her  grandmother 
thought,  and  Emmie  herself  thought  riding  must  be  "  aw 
fully  scary."  Val,  in  what  her  elders  took  to  be  some  un 
accountable  mood,  had  also  declined  to  ride,  saying,  men 
daciously,  that  she  had  enough  riding  on  Julia's  pony.  This 
resulted  in  Ethan's  going  out  several  times  with  Julia.  She 
was  nearly  two  years  older  than  Val,  and  "  quite  the  young 
lady."  People  began  to  smile  and  speculate,  and  the  Ot- 
ways  took  to  asking  Ethan  "  over." 

"  Change  your  mind,  Val,  and  come  out  Avith  us  this 
morning,"  Ethan  had  said,  before  going  off  with  Julia  for 
that  second  ride. 

"  I  can't ;  I  have  lessons." 

"Not  to-day,"  said  Mrs.  Gano. 

"No,  it's  Saturday.     Come,  I'll  get  you  a  mount." 

"No,  thank  you,  father's  better  now.  We're  beginning 
algebra  again  to-day." 

"Algebra!     What  on  earth  do  you  want  with — 

"  She  must  keep  up  with  her  classes,"  said  Mrs.  Gano, 
answering  for  her,  as  Val  went  out  of  the  room. 

But  it  was  a  good  hour  before  the  algebra  lesson.  Val 
went  up  to  her  father's  room  and  climbed  into  the  window- 
seat.  There,  with  judicious  arrangement  of  blind  and  the 
curtain  closed  in  round  her,  she  watched  for  Ethan  to 
mount  and  ride  away.  Julia  must  have  grown  impatient 
waiting.  She  called  for  him  to-day.  How  beautiful  she 
looked  —  beautiful  in  her  new  habit  !  Away  they  went 
laughing  in  the  sunshine.  Val  opened  the  window  ;  now 
they  were  turning  into  Mioto  Avenue  at  a  hard  gallop. 
She  drew  her  cautious  head  in  out  of  the  sweet  keen 

315 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION" 

air   and  buried  her   face   in   the   musty   old  red   moreen 
curtain. 

"  Why  didn't  you  go,  child,  if  you  wanted  to  so  much  ?" 
She  uncovered  startled  eyes.  Her  grandmother  was  stand 
ing  there,  looking  strangely  gentle.  "  Your  father  would 
have  postponed  the  algebra  for  once." 

"I  haven't  got  a  riding-habit." 

"  The  cashmere  skirt  you  wear  when  you  ride  out  with 
Julia  does  quite  well." 

The  girl  shook  her  head.  "  Besides,  I've  only  got  the 
skirt." 

"What's  wrong  with  your  nice  velveteen  jacket  ?" 

"  Hideous  !" 

They  were  silent  for  a  space.     Then  Val : 

"  Oh,  I  don't  care,  I've  got  lots  to  do. v 

She  slid  off  the  window-seat  and  went  down-stairs.  Val 
had  her  full  share  of  the  young  heart's  passionate  instinct  to 
keep  its  aching  to  itself.  She  had  no  idea  that  her  grand 
mother  had  seen  her  standing  outside  the  parlor  door  when 
Ethan  was  there  alone,  hesitating,  trying  to  go  in,  trying 
to  go  away,  and  in  the  end  succeeding  only  under  strong 
inward  compulsion  in  compassing  the  latter.  It  was  well 
she  never  dreamed  how  much  the  old  eyes  saw.  She  was 
sure  that  the  world  she  was  dwelling  in  was  a  place  no 
mortal  foot  had  ever  trod  before.  The  girl  felt  herself  a 
solitary  way-breaker  through  a  virgin  forest  ;  if  she  should 
tell  the  thousandth  part  of  the  magic  and  the  mystery  of 
this  new  world  of  her  discovery,  no  mortal  would  believe 
such  travellers'  tales. 

She  listened  fascinated  the  night  Ethan  said,  in  an 
swer  to  his  uncle's  platitude  about  "the  common  expe 
rience  "  : 

"There's  no  such  thing!  Experience  is  no  more  re 
duplicated  than  faces  are." 

"  Of  course,  I  don't  mean  down  to  the  smallest  detail," 
John  Gano  had  explained. 

"Oh,  as  to  that,  we  have  birth  and  death  in  common,  if 
that's  all." 

316 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  There's  a  wonderful  family  likeness  in  the  other  facts 
of  life/'  his  uncle  persisted. 

"  Yes/'  said  Mrs.  Gano  ;  "it  is  when  we  are  young  that 
we  think  there  could  never  have  been  anything  to  match 
our  experience." 

"Then  do  you  think  now  that  your  life  has  been  a 
replica  of  Mrs.  Otway's  ?'"' 

Mrs.  Gano  smiled. 

"  Oh  no/'  said  Val,  with  a  pleased  confidence,  "  there 
was  never  anybody  just  like  us  before." 

They  all  laughed. 

"No  doubt  we  are  'the  peculiar  people/"  said  Mrs. 
Gano,  calmly  deserting  her  first  postulate,  and  seeming 
quite  equal  to  facing  "  the  comic  laugh." 

"I  mean,"  said  Val,  "that  if  there  never  was  any  'me' 
in  the  world  before,  the  world's  a  different  place  now 
there's  'me'  in  it." 

They  laughed  with  less  misgiving. 

"  You  have  Goethe  on  your  side,  my  dear,"  said  her 
father.  "  Goethe  says  Nature  is  always  interesting  because 
she's  always  renewing  the  observer." 

"I  like  my  way  of  putting  it  best,"  the  girl  maintained 
—"sounds  more  interesting." 

"I've  found  out,  Val,"  said  Ethan,  "that  most  people 
who  make  believe  that  human  nature  is  everywhere  the 
same,  and  that  we're  all  as  alike  as  pins  in  a  row,  usually 
except  themselves.  That  shows  they're  wiser  than  their 
theories." 

"  No  one  denies, "said  John  Gano,  "that  a  slight  differ 
ence  in  the  conditions  makes  some  difference  in  the  result. 
We  were  speaking  broadly  of  the  main  outlines  of  life. 
They  are  curiously  common  to  us  all." 

"I  don't  see  those  'common  outlines,"'1  Ethan  an 
swered,  "  any  more  than  I  see  the  same  pattern  twice  in  a 
kaleidoscope.  I  see  the  same  boundary  walls — birth  and 
death — and  all  between  the  two,  endlessly  different  for 
each." 

"  Yes,  yes  ;  I  believe  it's  like  that,"  said  Val. 

317 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION* 

"  It  would  be  much  pleasanter  to  agree  with  you,  uncle," 
Ethan  remarked,  as  he  got  out  the  chess-board. "  "  It's  more 
comfortable— more  companionable.  I  think  there  are  few 
thoughts  so  overwhelming  as  what  John  Morley  calls  '  the 
awful  loneliness  of  life '—the  loneliness  that  there's  no 
help  for,  that  no  one  can  reach,  no  one  can  ever  share. 
Each  one  of  us  " — slowly,  absently,  he  set  the  chessmen 
in  their  places-—*' each  man  sits  apart,  with  his  own  soul 
and  its  unique  experience  forever  incommunicable,  forever 
different." 

"No  ;  not  even  incommunicable,  if  he  have  genius/'  re 
turned  his  uncle.  "The  odd  thing  is  that  in  that  case 
what  he  has  to  communicate  is  something  we  all  recognize. 
We  expect  him  to  be  different  ;  we  are  amazed  to  find  him 
just  like  ourselves,  with  the  trifling  addition  of  being  able 
to  say  what  the  rest  of  us  have  only  felt." 

"You  have  more  faith  in  the  capacity  and  the  veracity 
of  genius  than  I  have.  In  my  opinion,  not  one  of  those 
who  have  tried  to  reveal  themselves  has  been  able  to  give 
us  more  than  shreds  and  patches  of  reality.  And  they've 
discounted  the  fragments  of  truth  by  romancing,  con 
sciously  or  not — minting  themselves  better,  or  making 
themselves  worse  than  they  were.  The  real  revelations  are 
the  unconscious  ones." 

"St.  Augustine,"  suggested  John  Gano. 

His  nephew  laughed  and  shook  his  head. 

"Well,  Rousseau,"  he  amended,  looking  in  the  table- 
drawer  for  a  missing  bishop. 

"  Rousseau,  too — exactly  a  case  in  my  favor.  You  can't 
see  the  forest  for  the  trees,  nor  the  man  for  his  confes 
sions." 

John  Gano  shook  his  lion's  mane. 

•'If  you  could  project  your  notion  of  Kousseau,  uncle, 
and  I  could  do  the  same  by  mine,  do  you  suppose  they 
would  be  alike  ?" 

"  Possibly  not  ;  we  are  not  in  agreement  about  Rousseau." 

"Exactly;  and  do  you  think  if  we  could  summon  him 
from  the  shades  he  would  own  either  your  Jean  Jacques  or 

318 


TILE    OPEN    QUESTION 

mine  ?  Not  he.  And  he'd  be  right.  There's  more  bound 
up  in  men  than  they've  ever  been  able  to  liberate.  Even 
genius  can  do  no  more  than  make  signals  over  the  prison 
Avail." 

"Shakespeare,  of  course,  never  tried." 

'"'No;  think  of  it."  Instead  of  beginning  the  game, 
Ethan  stretched  out  his  long  legs  under  the  table,  and 
leaned  back  reflectively  with  his  hands  in  his  pockets — 
"think  of  it.  Shakespeare,  with  all  his  knowledge,  and 
his  miraculous  gift  of  expression,  his  vocabulary  double 
that  of  the  Bible,  and  greater  than  that  of  the  Bible  and 
Milton  put  together — even  Shakespeare  was  too  wise  to  try 
to  do  more  than  give  a  hint  here,  a  little  signal  there,  just 
as  people  do  in  real  life."  He  looked  up  suddenly  and 
caught  Val's  eye.  She  nodded  faintly.  "  Reminds  me  of  a 
talk  I  had  with  a  fellow  from  Bengal  who  came  over  on  the 
same  Cunarder  with  me.  He  was  telling  me  about  the 
murder  of  the  manager  of  a  tea-garden  in  the  Dooab — 
police  a  long  time  utterly  at  sea,  till  somebody  discovered 
that,  rummaging  among  his  victim's  belongings,  the  mur 
derer  had  smudged  a  Bengali  atlas  with  his  thumb.  This 
atlas  was  forwarded  to  the  bureau  where  the  thumb  impres 
sions  of  criminals  are  kept,  and  it  was  discovered  that  the 
impression  on  the  atlas  corresponded  with  the  thumb  re 
corded  of  a  noted  criminal  then  at  large.  The  man  was 
arrested  on  this  fact  alone.  Other  evidence  was  brought 
to  light,  and  when  the  game  was  up  the  murderer  con 
fessed." 

"Oh  yes/'  said  John  Gano,  quite  unimpressed,  "it's  a 
good  many  years  now  since  Galton — " 

"  Exactly,  but  when  it  comes  to  verifiable  differences  in 
our  thumb  whorls,  who  shall  guess  at  the  hidden  differ 
ences  in  our  brains  and  nerve  ganglia  ?  No,  no  ;  we  are 
not  alike.  We  are  terribly  and  wonderfully  and  forever 
different,  and  it's  your  first  play." 

The  next  afternoon  Emmie,  warmly  tucked  up  on  a  sofa 
by  the  fire,  had  fallen  asleep  while  her  father  read  aloud. 

319 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

Mrs.  Gano  made  her  son  a  sign,  and  they  went  up-stairs  to 
his  room.  Without  preface  she  began  to  urge  him  to  take 
the  money  he  had  been  going  to  use  in  his  journey  to  New 
York  and  go  instead  to  the  far  South,  as  the  doctor  ad 
vised.  She  could  put  a  little  to  it — enough  to  serve.  No, 
no  ;  he  wouldn't.  Why  not  ?  At  last  he  said  it  was  be 
cause  of  Val.  He  had  promised  her  they  would  go  East  in 
the  spring.  He  doubted  if  he  would  ever  be  strong  enough 
to  carry  out  the  plan,  but  Yal  must  not  think  he  had  gone 
back  on  his  word.  If  he  spent  the  money  this  winter,  there 
would  be  nothing  when  the  warm  weather  came. 

"John,"  said  his  mother,  "  it  is  partly  out  of  considera 
tion  for  Yal  that  I  urge  this." 

John  opened  his  eyes. 

"  I  want  you  to  go  away  for  a  change,  and  I  don't  want 
you  to  go  alone.  I  want  you  to  go  with  Ethan.  I've  al 
ready  mentioned  it  to  him.  He  knows  of  a  place  near 
Savannah." 

John  Gano  seemed  to  be  considering  in  a  bewildered  way. 

"  I  must  go  back,"  said  his  mother,  uneasily.  "  Emmie 
may  wake  and  want — "  She  seemed  oddly  nervous.  "  Pity 
Emmie  should  choose  this  particular  time  for  one  of  her 
colds." 

"  Yes,  poor  child  !  she's  missing  all  the  festivity." 

"Festivity  !"  echoed  his  mother.  "Hump  !  Anyhow, 
it  leaves  those  two  young  people  a  great  deal  alone." 

John  Gano  blinked. 

"  Ethan  and  Val  ?"  he  said,  absent-mindedly. 

His  mother  nodded. 

"  Oh,  I  wouldn't  worry  about  that.  He  might  be  left  to 
less  entertaining  people  than  Val." 

"  Precisely." 

They  looked  at  each  other  in  silence  for  a  moment. 

"  You  don't  mean— Val  ?     Why,  she's  a  child." 

"  She  is  older  than  my  mother  was  when  I  was  born." 

"  You  don't  think  that  Ethan- 
He  was  suddenly  alert,  anxious. 

"No,  no  ;   I  don't  think  it's  his  fault.     He,  too,  looks 

320 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

upon  her  as  a  child.  But  it  would  be  better  if  he  went 
away." 

"  Ah  !  Ah,  indeed  ;  I  wish  Fd  realized.  We'll  get  him 
away  as  soon  as  possible." 

His  air  of  sudden  energy  seemed  perhaps  over-anxious. 

"Don't  do  anything  to  excite  suspicion.  He  is  quite 
ready  to  go  away  with  you  at  the  end  of  the  week." 

"  Where  is  he  now  ?"  demanded  her  son. 

"  In  the  parlor  with  Val." 

They  came  down-stairs  together,  Mrs.  Gano  going  back 
to  Emmie.  Her  son  laid  his  hand  on  the  parlor  door  with 
something  both  anxious  and  inflexible  in  his  manner.  It 
might  appear  that  the  little  scene  on  the  other  side  was 
easily  interrupted  by  a  less  extravagant  expenditure  of 
energy.  So  little  may  we  know  the  people  we  spend  our 
lives  with,  that  the  not  unobservant  old  woman  at  the  op 
posite  door  thought  there  was  no  more  in  her  son's  mind 
than  in  her  own — a  wish  to  save  Val  the  pain  of  an  unre 
quited  devotion. 

The  talk  with  Ethan  to  which  Mrs.  Gano  had  just  re 
ferred  had  taken  place  less  than  an  hour  before.  Although 
it  had  been  a  most  discreet  interchange,  beginning  and  end 
ing  with  John  Gano,  it  had  left  the  young  man  in  a  state  of 
acute  discomfort  and  vague  rage  at  fate.  Why  had  he  not 
gone  away  before?  Why  should  his  lingering  be  punished 
by  this  awful  infliction  of  the  care  of  his  uncle,  or  at  best 
his  escort  hundreds  of  miles  away,  and  his  establishment  in 
Georgia  ?  It  was  too  much.  He  had  been  ready  to  deal 
generously  with  these  queer  relations  in  the  matter  of 
money.  But  to  refuse  his  help  to  keep  a  whole  roof  over 
their  heads,  and  then  calmly  to  demand  this  of  him  I  It 
made  him  laugh,  but  it  made  him  angry  too.  He  cursed 
his  folly  and  inertia,  as  he  called  it,  in  staying  on.  Why, 
he  might  have  been  at  Tuxedo  at  this  moment !  He  had 
wasted  enough  time  here  to  have  gone  to  the  Riviera.  But 
as  he  thought  of  the  dozens  of  things  he  might  have  done, 
a  sharp  realization  came  to  him  of  the  inner  dulness  of 
these  outwardly  glittering  ways  of  killing  time.  He  had 
x  321 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

tried  them  all;  he  knew  them  for  what  they  were  worth. 
Whether  work  or  play,  they  were  just  so  many  devices  for 
shortening  the  spun -out  tale  of  days.  He  knew  of  old 
where  such  thoughts  would  lead  him.  He  walked  up  and 
down  from  Daniel  Boone  to  the  mirror,  glowering  out  from 
time  to  time  at  the  rain.  Beast  of  a  day !  Where  was 
everybody  ?  Suddenly  he  opened  the  door.  Val  started 
back. 

"  Oh — a— oh  !"  she  said,  confused.  "  I  was  just  coming 
to  see  if—" 

She  stopped,  obviously  at  a  loss. 

"  And  I  was  just  wondering  where  you  were  all  this  time." 
She  came  in  smiling  and  flushing,  and  shut  the  door. 
"  What  an  awful  day !"  he  said,  drawing  up  a  chair  for 
her  to  the  neglected  fire. 

"Is  it  ?"  she  inquired,  blandly. 
"  Is  it  ?" 

He  walked  to  the  window. 

"I  hadn't  noticed."  She  looked  after  him  and  beyond 
him,  through  the  blurred  window-panes.  "Yes,  it  is  rather 
rainy  and  blowy." 

"  Hardly  four  o'clock,  and  dark  as  a  wolf's  mouth." 
"  Yes,  the  sun  sets  early  these  days.     I  love  the  long 
evenings." 

She  poked  the  low-burned  lire  till  a  feeble  flame  sprang 
up.  He  turned  and  looked  at  her  through  the  twilight. 

"  What  do  you  do,  little  cousin,  when  you  want  to  kill 
time  ?" 

She  glanced  over  her  shoulder  with  sudden  gravity, 
shovel  in  hand. 

"Do  you  know,  I  think  to  '  kill  time'  is  the  most 
hideous,  murderous  pi) ruse  in  the  language.  I  wish  you 
wouldn't  use  it." 

"  What  do  you  propose  as  a  substitute  ?" 
"Just  remembering  how  little  time  there  is  for  all.  there 
is  to  do  with  it."     (No  coal  left  in  the  scuttle— she  must 
go  and  tell  Venie.) 

"Ah,  yes,"  Ethan  said,  coming  back  and  sitting  down. 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  Bat  suppose  you  haven't   got  a  mission?     Suppose  no 
body  and  nothing  has  any  particular  need  of  you  ?" 

' '  Oh,  I  wasn't  thinking  of  missions  and  needs.  I  was  just 
thinking  of  how  much  there  was  to  see  and — to — to  feel — 
to  find  out  about  !  Enough  to  last  a  million  years,  and  we 
aren't  given  (in  this  life)  a  hundred/'  Gloom  settled  down 
upon  her  face.  "I  think  it's  simply  awful  that  we're  allowed 
so  little  time.  Even  elephants  and  ravens  are  better  off." 

He  looked  into  her  woe-begone  countenance,  and  began  to 
shake  with  laughter. 

"Well,  well,  this  is  the  other  side  of  the  shield." 

Val  was  disconcerted  at  his  mirth. 

"  I'm  glad  to  see  you  so  cheerful  about  it,"  she  said.  "/ 
think  it's  simply  tragic." 

"  You  observe  that  ^ven  such  optimism  as  yours  has  its 
dark  side  too." 

"Dark?  Yes,  coal-black,  but  never  dull."  She  spoke 
with  great  solemnity.  "No  matter  what  comes,  it  can't 
help  being  frantically  interesting." 

"  How  can  you  be  sure  of  that  ?     You  may  be — 

He  stopped. 

"  How  can  I  be  sure  ?  Why,  just  because,  don't  you  see, 
it  will  be  happening  to  me.  That  makes  it  quite  new- 
makes  it  tremendous."  She  studied  the  dark  enigmatic 
face,  and  her  radiance  paled  a  trifle.  "You  said  so  your 
self  the  other  night." 

"'/said  so?" 

"Don't  you  remember? — about  everybody  being  dif 
ferent." 

"Different?    Yes." 

"Oh,  that  made  me  so  happy."  She  bent  towards  him, 
beaming  again.  "  I  so  love  thinking  that  none  of  the  dull 
old  rules  hold  for  me — that  I'm  the  first  one  of  this  sort. 
What  did  for  other  people  won't  do  for  me — what  happen 
ed  to  them  needn't  make  me  afraid.  Oh,  it's  splendid  to 
think  it's  all  new  and  different  because  of  me !" 

She  pressed  her  hands  together,  and  her  face,  yes,  it 
was  like  a  lamp  in  the  gathering  gloom. 

323 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

*'l  wonder  what  you'll  do  with  your  life?"  said  the 
man,  with  something  very  tender  in  the  low  voice. 

"Do  with  it?  I  shall  love  it  so,  it  will  have  to  be  good 
to  me.  I  shall  sing,  and  I  shall  travel — go  everywhere,  do 
everything.  I  mustn't  miss  a  single  thing — oh,  dear  no  ! 
not  a  single,  single  thing/'  Silence  a  moment,  and  then, 
"  There's  just  one  thought  troubles  me,"  she  said. 

"Ah  yes,  there's  always  one — when  there  aren't  more." 

"  Less  time  than  a  silly  old  elephant's  got — and  here  my 
father's  had  to  put  off  starting  till  the  spring.  I  hope  I 
shall  be  able  to  wait  all  that  time  for  him  ;  but  sometimes 
I  feel  as  if  I  shouldn't." 

"  Ah,  but  your  promise  to  me  !" 

"  What  was  it  I  promised,  cousin  Ethan  ?" 

Sharply,  in  the  silence,  a  cry  rang  out.  Ethan  leaped  to 
his  feet. 

"It's  only  the  ghost,"  said  Val,  quietly. 

"  Of  course— Yaffti.     But  what  on  earth— 

"  Yaffti  ?" 

"I  heard  it  as  a  child,  and  called  it  ' Yaffti.'  What 
the  devil  is  it?" 

"Only  the  clumsy  old  lightning-rod  shrieking  in  its 
rusty  fixtures  when  the  wind  blows." 

"  How  do  you  know  ?" 

"  I  lay  on  the  rug  here  and  listened,  and  then  walked 
round  and  round  the  house  in  the  wind  till  I  found  out 
what  it  was  made  the  crvinsr  sound." 

*  O 

"  Weren't  you  frightened  ?" 

"Oh  yes,  dreadfully." 

"  IFm  !    So  Yaffti  turns  out  to  be  the  spirit  of  the  blast !" 

"I  was  awfully  disappointed.  I  hoped  it  was  a  real 
ghost.  Why  did  you  call  it  Yaffti  ?" 

"Oh,  well,  what  would  you  call  it  if  you  didn't  call  it 
Yaffti  ?" 

She  laughed. 

"  I'm  forgetting  you  hate  the  gloaming.  I  must  go  and 
tell  Venie  to  bring  the  coal,  and — " 

"  Don't  go  !"  he  said,  suddenly,  holding  out  a  hand. 

324 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

She  laughed,  a  little  nervously. 

"I  believe  you're  afraid  of  the  dark." 

" 'Yes,  little  cousin,  I've  always  been  afraid  of  the  dark." 

She  moved  away  towards  the  door. 

"Val!"  The  voice  seemed  to  fall  on  her  naked  heart, 
and  made  it  shrink  deliciously.  "  Val  !" 

"Yes,"  she  said,  hardly  above  a  whisper. 

Was  anything  else  said  ?  She  never  knew.  She  remem 
bered  nothing  but  groping  blindly  two  or  three  steps,  and 
then  suddenly  realizing  that  she  was  going  towards  him  in 
the  dusk  with  shaking,  outstretched  hands.  For  what  ? 
"  Oh,  God  !  what  am  I  doing  ?"  She  wheeled  about  with 
a  sharp  inward  twist  of  mortification.  Blessing  the  kindly 
dark,  she  made  for  the  door. 

"  Don't  go  !"  said  the  voice. 

' '  Only  to  get  the  light,"  she  said,  clinging  to  the  door 
knob,  shaken  into  trembling  from  crown  to  toe. 

"It's  not  dark,  little  cousin,  while  you're  here." 

She  did  not  stir — nor  he.  The  clock  ticked  loud.  The 
wind  had  risen  and  was  howling  like  a  beaten  hound. 
How  curious,  thought  the  man,  vaguely,  that  the  natural 
sounds  of  wind,  or  sea,  or  falling  inland  waters,  or  the 
voices  of  night  creatures,  are  all  sad  or  else  discordant. 
Surely,  surely  the  spirit  of  the  world  is  the  spirit  of  plaint 
and  dole. 

"Val!" 

"Yes,  cousin  Ethan." 

"You  are  too  far  off.     Bring  the  light  nearer." 

She  heard  steps  creaking  down  the  stair.  Or  was  it  only 
that  Yaffti  turned  and  strained  in  his  rusty  fetters  ?  The 
door  was  hurriedly  opened. 

"  Why  are  you  two  sitting  in  the  dark  ?"  said  John 
Gano. 

"  We've  been  telling  ghost  stories,"  said  Ethan,  as  Val 
slipped  out. 


CHAPTER  XXII 

MRS.  GANG  sat  with  Emmie  that  evening  in  the  long 
room.  The  little  girl  had  been  having  restless  nights,  and 
had  fallen  asleep  just  before  supper.  Vul  went  alone  into 
the  parlor  after  that  meal,  and  waited  for  the  two  men  to 
join  her.  They  were  smoking  in  the  dining-room — a  thing 
unprecedented.  They  stayed  a  long  time.  Eight  o'clock 
— nine  o'clock — nearly  ten.  Val  lay  down  on  the  sofa  in 
the  shadow  behind  the  big  arm-chair,  so  worn  out  with  emo 
tion  she  fell  asleep.  By-and-by,  through  the  mist  of  her 
dreaming,  the  low  sound  of  voices  broke  :  her  father's, 
with  that  familiar  note  of  weary  cheerfulness,  and  now 
another,  deep,  vibrant,  full  of  mutiny  and  music.  She  lay 
a  moment  with  shut  eyes,  her  half-awakened  senses  luxuri 
ously  steeped  in  the  sound,  careless  of  the  meaning.  Now 
her  father  answered.  Ah,  how  long  his  insistent  staccato 
kept  striking  the  troubled  air.  It  was  plain  he  was  in  one 
of  his  talking  moods,  when  there  was  no  stopping  him,  just 
as  for  days — sometimes  for  weeks — there  would  be  no  such 
thing  as  getting  more  than  "  Yes,"  or  "'No,"  or  "  Thank 
you,"  across  his  tightened  lips.  She  was  dropping  off  to 
sleep  again  when  suddenly  Ethan's  voice  stabbed  her 
broad  awake,  saying : 

"  The  world  is  a  cruel  place,  the  world  is  an  evil  place, 
ergo,  I  hate  the  world." 

"Xo,  no,  you're  wrong,"  said  John  CJano.  "You're 
blind  if  you  don't  see  the  world  is  beautiful,  is  rooted  in 
triumphing  good." 

Val  sat  up  in  the  dark  corner  behind  the  chair,  ready  to 
cry  "Hear,  hear  !" 

"  I  admit,"  her  father  went  on,  "  that  man  has  defiled  it 
and  made  it  a  den  of  thieves." 

326 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  Comes  to  the  same  thing  m  the  end,  although  I  don't 
agree — 

"It  does  not  come  to  the  same  thing.  There's  all  the 
difference  in  what  it  "  comes  to  "  between  the  curable  and 
the  incurable.  You  and  I  may  not  live  to  see  it,  but  the 
world  will  one  day  be  a  fit  habitation  for  better  men  than 
we." 

Val,  peering  out,  saw  Ethan  shake  his  head. 

"  When  men  are  truly  brothers,  when  we  have  worked 
the  ape  and  tiger  out,  when  we  may  be  fortunate  without 
blood-guiltiness.  Even  youf"his  uncle  went  on,  a  swell  of 
enthusiasm  lifting  up  his  voice — "even  you  may  live  to 
see  men  realizing  that  Science  is  the  great  Captain,  the 
true  Redeemer.  I  should  envy  you  your  chance  of  hailing 
the  beginning  of  that  bloodless  revolution,  except  that  I  am 
as  sure  of  its  coming  as  my  neighbor's  children's  children 
will  be  when  they  have  ocular  proof  and  daily  profit  of  it." 

"I  wish  I  were  as  sure  of  it  as  you." 

"My  boy,  you've  only  to  look  about  you.  Mind,  I  don't 
say  within.  No,  no" — his  voice  dragged — "  one  sees  there 
one's  own  failures  and  defeats,  and  one  is  blinded  to  the 
larger  good.  I'm  no  sentimentalist,  either."  He  flared  up. 
"  I'm  not  saying  I  shall  reap  any,  or  even  you  much,  of  this 
harvest.  But  come  !" — he  pulled  his  shambling  figure  out 
of  the  chair  and  stood  before  the  fire  almost  erect — "life  is 
nobler  than  men  thought.  Some  men's  share  is  to  see,  be 
fore  they  stumble  into  the  dark,  the  light  that  other  men 
shall  walk  by — see  it,  and  tell  the  shorter-sighted  to  be  of 
good  cheer,  for  the  light  is  at  hand." 

"And  those  who  stumbled  before  the  light  came  near 
enough  ?" 

"Oh,  well,  at  most  they  'fell  on  sleep."' 

"Ah-h-h!" 

"Such  men  are  no  worse  off  than  Plato,  and  Christ,  and 
Buddha.  The  great  thing  was  to  know  there  was  light." 

"I  wonder  the  memory  of  those  old  hopes  doesn't  lessen 
your  faith  in  the  new." 

"  Why  ?  Progress  isn't  a  passing  fashion ;  it's  the  life 

327 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

principle,  another  name  for  the  power  that  makes  for  right 
eousness,  the  impulse  towards  the  light,  the  force  that 
pushes  the  acorn  sprout  out  of  the  mould,  and  goads  man 
night  and  day  towards  some  ultimate  good.  As  long  as 
there's  life,  my  boy,  it  will  be  better  and  ever  better  life. 
It's  the  law." 

As  he  stood  with  arm  extended,  girt  about  with  sudden 
authority,  Ethan  had  a  vision  of  Moses  on  Mount  Sinai. 
This  wus  too  old  an  aspect  of  her  father  for  Val  to  be  much 
impressed.  She  watched  the  effect  on  her  cousin,  however, 
with  feverish  interest. 

"  You're  an  incurable  optimist,  uncle,"  he  was  saying. 

"  Ah,  don't  mistake  me.  I'm  not  one  of  those  who  drug 
themselves  with  dreaming."  Xo  Hebrew  prophet  now  ;  it 
was  the  keen,  practical -minded  American  who  spoke. 
"The  new  order  won't  be  brought  about  by  idle  optimism 
any  more  than  by  prayers,  or  politics,  or  private  magna 
nimities." 

"  How,  then  ?" 

"  It  will  be  the  direct  result  of  a  higher  standard  of  pub 
lic  health." 

He  spoke  briskly,  as  one  making  a  business  proposition. 

"Health!"  echoed  Ethan  sharply — "health  of  the  pub 
lic  conscience,  I  suppose  you  mean." 

"  Health  of  the  body  first  of  all,"  growled  the  prophet. 
"Health  mental  and  moral  as  the  natural  result.  But 
since  the  Maker  of  the  world  established  the  physical  basis 
seons  before  he  bothered  about  the  soul,  the  first  thing  we 
have  to  do  is  to  make  strong  our  foundations,  since  forages 
we've  systematically  neglected  them,  when  we  haven't  oc 
cupied  ourselves  in  actively  undermining  them.  The  halt, 
the  blind,  the  diseased,  are  not  for  this  Xew  Jerusalem. 
Its  first  condition  of  citizenship  will  be  mens  sana  in  cor- 
porc  sano.  And  the  beauty  of  it  is  that,  to  attain  this 
health,  no  one  man's  welfare  will  avail.  All  men  must 
share  it,  or  all  men  are  menaced.  It  means  a  perfect  So 
cialism." 

"Ah,  Socialism  !" 

328 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"Not  the  travesty  that  masquerades  with  banners  and 
brass  bands,  and  issues  pamphlets  against  property  ;  but 
the  Socialism  that  is  the  true  science  of  life,  and  that  will 
make  possible  the  men  I  see  in  the  future. " 

Ethan  regarded  the  rapt  look  of  the  seer  with  a  kindly 
cynicism.  The  absent  eyes  of  the  elder  fell  upon  the  criti 
cal  young  face  with  a  gleam  of  suspicion.  Again  and  again 
since  his  arrival  something  in  Ethan's  easy,  lounging  atti 
tudes  had  not  only  roused  an  obscure  antagonism  in  the 
older  man,  but  had  seemed  the  most  irritating  expression 
of  bis  nephew's  habit  of  mind.  His  nonchalant  grace 
seemed  to  say  with  smiling  superiority  :  "  What's  your  hur 
ry  ?  Why  should  /  exert  myself  ?  Let  the  other  man 
walk."  John  Gano,  looking  at  him  now,  felt,  in  addition 
to  the  unreasoning  rage  at  Ethan's  laissez  alter  way  of  tak 
ing  life,  a  kind  of  half-morbid,  half-fanatical  desire  to  prick 
the  young  man  into  action,  into  some  likeness  to  that  des 
perate  American  strenuousness  that  had  died  so  hard  with 
John  Gano. 

"  The  men  I'm  thinking  of  aren't  grown  in  arm-chairs  or 
under  glass,  any  more  than  they  are  made  in  filthy  work 
shops  or  in  thieves'  alleys ;  they  are  the  sons  of  happy, 
voluntary  toil,  and  pure  air,  and  honest  dealing." 

"Ah,"  said  Ethan,  "very  likely." 

"Not  very  likely — certain.  It's  one  of  the  few  things  a 
man  may  be  dogmatic  about.  It  ought  to  be  the  prime 
article  of  faith.  Now,  you're  a  rich  man,  and  you  say 
you're  going  into  politics — you're  going  to  help  prescribe 
for  this  sick  old  world.  Very  good.  You  have  the  more 
need  to  mark  well  how  man's  oppression  of  his  brother  re 
coils  upon  himself.  It  is  accounted  prosperity — •  getting 
on  in  the  world ' — to  be  able  to  have  a  horde  of  grown-up, 
hardy  men  and  women  about  you  in  your  hot-house  ihomes 
to  wait  upon  you,  to  prevent  you  from  doing  any  part  of 
that  work  which  alone  will  keep  you  whole.  Why,  as  I 
think  of  it" — he  tossed  back  his  lion's  mane  with  a  fine 
contempt — "it  sounds  incredible  this  should  be  the  rich 
man's  own  desire.  It's  like  some  cunning  artifice  practised 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

by  a  nimble-witted  slave  upon  an  imbecile  and  cruel  mas 
ter,  a  slow  but  certain  process  of  undoing.  You  not  only 
pay  another  man  to  take  away  your  means  of  health,  you 
usually  maltreat  him.  Think  of  it  from  the  point  of  view 
of  economy,  you  who  are  going  into  politics.  The  precious 
contrivance  spoils  two  constitutions,  not  to  speak  of  possi 
ble  heirs.  One  man  dying  for  lack  of  physical  exercise, 
another  killing  himself  by  doing  two  men's — ten  men's — 
share.  You  don't  believe  me.  You  are  sitting  there  hug 
ging  some  mental  reservation.'' 

"No,  no/'  said  Ethan,  "  I  was  only  turning  it  over." 

"  I  assure  you  I  know  whereof  I  speak.  These  men  who 
grind  the  faces  of  the  poor  ;  these  railroad  magnates,  manu 
facturers,  corn  kings,  bankers,  toiling  day  and  night  in 
stuffy  offices — oh,  I  saw  them  in  Xew  York  ;  I  lived  among 
them;  I  see  them  still"— his  eyes  blazed — "toiling,  op 
pressing,  cheating,  to  lay  up  riches.  What  have  they  in 
reality  left  to  their  children— a  hoard  of  yellow  gold  ? 
More  than  that ;  more  than  an  inheritance  of  strained 
nerves  and  bending  backs.  They  have  left  them  the  means 
of  gratifying  their  sloth  and  their  gluttony." 

He  took  a  turn  up  and  down  the  room,  shaking  his  head. 
He  stopped  suddenly  before  his  nephew  with  a  look  of  grim 
pleasure. 

"  It's  poor  comfort,  but  let  the  beggar  in  the  street 
know  himself  revenged.  The  rich  man,  who  has  just  re 
fused  him  a  dime  to  buy  a  dinner,  goes  home,  and  what 
he  overeats  and  overdrinks,  that  would  feed  and  revive 
the  beggar,  provides  your  rich  man  with  his  gout  and 
fifty  fine  disorders  unknown  among  the  poor.  When 
he  refuses  to  share  his  dinner  with  the  hungry,  your 
Dives  gets  not  only  curses,  but  diseases  of  the  digestive 
organs." 

Ethan  burst  out  laughing  at  the  vindictive  satisfaction 
of  the  climax. 

"Come,  can  you  deny  it?"  his  uncle  urged.  "Drugs, 
kurs,  baths — these  are  needed  only  to  repair  the  waste  of 
stupid  living  ;  they  are  substitutes  for  the  right  kind  of 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

labor  and  of  fare,  but  they  only  patch  the  breach  that  sim 
pler  living  would  make  whole." 

"  You  make  me  think  of  James  Benton.  You  know  him 
by  reputation  ?" 

"Specialist  ? — nerves  ?     Yes,  very  good  man." 

"Well,  he'd  been  attending  a  fashionable  woman  in  New 
York — for  about  ten  years,  he  told  me.  She'd  paid  him 
enormous  fees  to  run  over  from  Boston  and  'keep  her 
going.'  He  was  rather  sick  of  it,  and  one  day  he  said  : 
'  Oh  yes,  I  can  vary  the  tonic  and  bolster  you  up  for  the 
season;  but  I  could  cure  you,  you  know/  'Brute"  she 
screamed,  'then  why  haven't  you  in  all  these  years  ?'  '  You 
won't  take  my  medicine.'  '  Which  medicine  ?'  '  Six  months' 
service  as  housemaid  in  a  farm-house  in  the  White  Moun 
tains/" 

"Well,"  said  John  Gano,  with  interest,  "and  the  wom 
an  ?" 

"  Oh,  she  only  laughed.  However,  there  are  a  certain 
number  of  people,  I  find  over  here,  who  do  care  about 
physical  culture.  Fellows  at  the  universities  think  a  lot 
more  about  athletics  than  they  did  in  my  time.  Girls'  col 
leges  pay  tremendous  attention  to  that  sort  of  thing. 
Haven't  you  noticed  ?  Our  women  are  finding  out  it 
touches  the  'beauty  question/  That's  done  more  than 
all  the  books  and  doctors  in  creation.  Oddly  enough,  our 
society  women  in  particular,  as  I  saw  at  Newport — 

"Yes,  yes,"  interrupted  his  uncle.  "We're  moving  in 
the  right  direction,  but  slowly — very  slowly.  Even  health 
is  little  more  with  us  as  yet  than  a  newly  discovered  pre 
rogative  of  the  prosperous.  They're  finding  out  it's  the  con 
dition  of  survival.  Oh,  give  us  time,  and  it'll  come  all 
right." 

"  Perhaps.  But  even  in  the  Old  World,  where  you'd  think 
they'd  had  time  enough,  they've  got  at  only  one  aspect  of 
the  evil.  They're  alive  to  the  need  of  mere  exercise,  espe 
cially  in  England.  Oh,  the  devices  !"  laughed  the  young 
man,  "by  which  the  idle  well-to-do  may,  in  default,  as  you 
would  say,  of  trees  to  fell  or  coal  to  dig  and  bricks  to  lay, 

331 


THK    OPEN    QUESTION 

develop,  notwithstanding,  their  biceps  and  their  chests ! 
I've  seen  many  a  fellow,  with  a  quite  ludicrous  absence  of 
enjoyment,  doing  dumb-bell  whim-whams,  or  shouldering 
his  golf-clubs,  or  going  off  to  play  rackets,  with  the  stern 
resolve  to  get  his  quantum  of  exercise,  whether  it  amuses 
him  or  not." 

'•'Yes,  yes,  yes,"  John  Gano  broke  in,  ''mere  cultivators 
of  muscle  don't  interest  me  much,  though  they  go  a  step 
in  the  right  direction.  A  man  must  face  and  overcome 
hardship,  real  h'ardship,  before  he's  good  for  anything.  Man 
is  like  the  good  wheat,  he  flourishes  where  it's  cold  enough 
to  give  him  a  good  pinching  frost  once  a  year.  Your  finest- 
flavored  fruits  are  grown  where  man  contends  with  Nature, 
not  as  in  the  tropics,  where  she  drops  her  insipid  increase 
into  his  idle  lap.  Those  games  that  men  play  at  while  their 
brothers  starve  are  well  enough  for  those  who  like  'em,  but 
the  great  majority  of  average  boys  and  girls,  and  even,  to 
some  extent,  perverted  men  and  women,  too,  are  never  so 
well  amused  as  when  they're  making  something.  If  every 
one  had  some  bit  of  manual  labor  to  do,  something  he 
could  do  with  love,  studying  to  bring  it  to  perfection— 

"  Ah  yes,"  said  Ethan,  with  a  livelier  interest,  "  that 
might  bring  men  back  a  sense  of  beauty." 

"At  all  events,"  said  the  elder,  sturdily,  "it  would 
bring  man  back  to  the  bed-rock  of  wholesome  endeavor  ; 
and  while  he  was  strengthening  his  muscles  and  his  morals, 
and  laying  up  a  fit  inheritance  for  his  children,  he  would 
be  helping  to  solve  the  industrial  problem  of  the  world. 
The  vulgar  stigma  would  be  lifted  from  the  laboring  class." 

"Ah — h'm — yes,"  murmured  Ethan,  with  a  somewhat 
lackadaisical  air. 

John  Gano  studied  his  nephew's  long,  careless,  lounging 
figure  with  a  growing  disapproval. 

"In  the  time  to  come,"  said  John  Gano,  significantly, 
"  the  only  idle  will  be  the  few,  and  ever  fewer,  sick,  and  the 
very  old.  Chronic  disease  will  be  looked  upon  as  the  only 
lasting  disgrace.  The  evil  will  hide  their  complaints  as 
carefully  as  to-day  they  hide  their  crimes.  They  will  be 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

more  ashamed  of  an  attack  of  indigestion  or  of  gout  than 
a  man  is  to-day  of  being  seen  drunk  in  public,  or  caught 
robbing  a  till.  He  who  passes  a  disease  down  the  line  will 
be  looked  upon  as  a  traitor,  the  only  criminal  deserving 
capital  punishment." 

Ethan  looked  up  quickly,,  scrutinizing  the  grim  face  for 
a  moment,  and  then,  unaccountably  to  himself,  his  own 
look  went  down. 

Val  had  lost  the  sense  with  which  she  awoke  of  over 
hearing  something  not  intended  for  her,  and  of  being 
under  the  necessity  of  making  her  presence  known  in  the 
first  pause.  The  talk  was  just  an  amplification  of  views  to 
which  her  father  had  accustomed  her  from  childhood.  She 
would  have  gone  to  sleep  again,  or  come  out  and  said  good 
night,  but  for  the  interest  of  seeing  their  effect  on  Ethan, 
who  had  already  been  wrought  upon  to  the  extent  of  say 
ing  that  he  "hated"  the  beautiful  world.  Why  was  he 
looking  so  black-browed  and  forbidding  now  ?  She  must 
pay  attention  and  follow  this. 

"  There'll  be  fewer  hospitals,"  her  father  was  saying,  with 
staccato  emphasis,  "and  less  vapid  sentimentalizing  over 
those  who  suffer  from  violation  of  the  plain  laws  of  health." 

"Well,  it  strikes  me,"  said  Ethan,  "that  if  the  poor 
devil  has  got  his  weak  digestion,  or  his  gout,  or  what  not, 
from  some  unenlightened  ancestor — 

"It  must  strike  you  that  in  that  case  he's  in  the  position 
of  the  man  whose  father  died  in  debt,  in  disgrace.  The 
loyal  son  must  wipe  out  the  score." 

"  It's  devilish  hard  on  the  son.  He'll  say  he  has  his  own 
debts  to  pay — an  obligation  to  himself." 

"As  a  man  of  honor,  or" — with  a  gesture  of  impatience 
— "of  mere  sense,  he  will  know  he  has  no  obligation  so 
binding  as  to  end  the  evil  with  his  life,  leaving  no  offshoot 
to  sow  the  seeds  anew.  It  is  civic  duty,  it" — the  stern 
voice  wavered — "it  is  fatherly  pity.  When  I  see  my  little 
girl's  eyes  bright  with  fever  —  with  this  old  fever  that's 
been  wasting  me  these  forty  years — do  you  suppose  I  find 
much  comfort  in  thinking  I  had  it  from  my  father,  and 

333 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

have  by  foolish  living  only  augmented  a  little  my  inheri 
tance  ?" 

He  shook  his  lioifs  head  fiercely.  The  break  in  her 
father's  voice,  even  more  than  the  words  with  their  dimly 
comprehended  menace,  brought  back  a  quick  realization  to 
the  girl  that  her  father  had  no  notion  of  her  presence. 
Should  she  come  out  now  ?  It  would  be  embarrassing  to 
them  all,  for  he  was  strangely  moved.  If  she  waited  a  few 
moments  he  would  get  back  to  generalities,  and  then  she 
would  come  out  and  say  good-night,  lint  under  this  play 
ing  at  expediency  was  an  eager  curiosity  to  hear  more,  to 
understand  better. 

"What  do  you  mean  by  'this  old  fever'  ?"  Ethan  asked. 

ki  Well" — his  uncle  turned  his  rough  head  slowly  to  the 
door  to  assure  himself  it  was  shut — "I  mean  something 
that  my  mother  and  I  agreed  not  to  talk  about.  There  is 
a  word  that  no  one  ever  hears  mentioned  under  this  roof. 
We  don't  mention  the  word  because  " — he  sunk  his  voice 
to  a  whisper — "  because  the  thing  itself  is  here. " 

"  What  is  the  word  ?" 

"'  Consumption." 

Ethan  sat  looking  at  him  in  silence.  Val  half  rose.  She 
must  let  them  know  she  was  there.  But — consumption  ! 
She  sank  down.  Was  it  true  that  was  the  ghost  that 
haunted  the  Fort?  Certainly  it  was  true  that  she  had 
never  heard  the  word  on  the  lips  of  her  elders. 

"  My  father  and  my  wife  died  of  it,"  John  Gano  was  say 
ing.  "  My  mother  has  the  old  lingering  form  of  it.  It 
was  'galloping  consumption  '  that  carried  my  sister  Valeria 
out  of  the  world  at  thirty.  I  am  dying  of  it.  My  chil 
dren—" 

A  curious  hoarse  sound  tore  its  way  out  of  his  throat, 
and  he  buried  his  head  in  his  hands.  When  he  looked  up 
his  eyes  were  wild  and  bright.  Val  held  her  breath,  and 
the  nails  of  her  clinched  hands  dug  into  her  palms. 

"I  have  just  one  hope,"  her  father  said,  *•'  that  my  in 
nocent  children  will  go  out  as  painlessly  as  may  be,  before 
the  great  battle  begins." 

334 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

Val  drew  back,  crouching  behind  the  chair  -  back  with 
blanched  face. 

"It  is  too  late  to  hope  that/'  said  Ethan. 

"  No,  it's  not  too  late  ;  the  enemy  is  still  in  ambush." 

"  The  enemy  ?" 

"  Yes.     The  battle  won't  begin  till  sex  finds  them  out." 

"What  then?" 

"Then  they  will  have  to  be  told  what  I  was  not  told  in 
time." 

"  What  would  yon  say  ?" 

"I" — the  hoarse  voice  shook — "  Fd  tell  them  how  full 
of  holes  their  armor  is." 

"Uncle  John,  you'll  never  be  so  cruel." 

Val,  behind  the  big  chair,  lifted  her  scared  face  in  the 
shadow,  looking  on  as  a  woman  might  at  a  duel  fought  for 
her. 

"  It  is  the  only  kindness.  When  I  thought  I  shouldn't 
live  to  see  them  old  enough  to  know,  I  wrote  the  matter 
down.  Ila  !" — he  laughed  wearily — "  in  the  form  of  a  last 
will  and  testament ;  a  legacy  from  a  father  who  will  leave 
them  nothing  else  except —  He  got  up  and  turned  away, 
coughing.  He  walked  up  and  down  the  room  again,  with 
dragging  step  and  bent  head.  He  stopped  suddenly  and 
laid  his  hand  on  the  young  man's  shoulder.  "I  see  too 
plainly  the  lesson  of  the  past  not  to  hand  my  knowledge 
on.  It's  all  I'm  good  for  now.  This  fair  future  for  the 
race  that  I've  believed  in,  that  Fve  foreseen  so  long — " 
He  was  interrupted  by  the  painful  cough,  but  conquered  it 
an  instant.  "Not  only  have  I  always  known  I  could  have 
no  personal  share  in  it,  not  even  through  my  children— 

The  cough  gripped  him  again,  and  he  turned  away  with 
handkerchief  to  his  lips. 

Ethan  watched  him,  unmoved,  with  a  kind  of  unsympa 
thetic  fascination. 

"I  think,"  said  the  young  man,  before  his  uncle  found 
his  voice  again,  "you  are  going  on  to  say  something  I  had 
to  try  to  disabuse  my  mind  of,  years  ago,  when  my  own 
health  smashed  up  before  I  went  to  France." 

885 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

John  Gano  dropped  into  the  rocking-chair  by  the  fire,  and 
lay  back  a  moment  with  closed  eyes  and  laboring  breath. 

"I  didn't  know,"  he  said,  faintly,  "  that  you'd  had  your 
warning,  but  I  see" — he  opened  his  eyes  suddenly—*'  I  see 
that  your  New  England  blood  is  too  thin,  too  office-stricken, 
to  save  you.  You've  nothing— absolutely  nothing  to  hope 
for  from  the  Gano  side."  His  voice  was  strong.  It  rang 
like  a  challenge.  "My  mother  is  wrong!  Our  fathers 
have  eaten  sour  grapes." 

Ethan  leaned  forward  about  to  speak,  but  his  uncle  broke 
in  harshly : 

"  I  tell  you  you  belong  to  a  worn-out  race.  We  are 
among  those  who  are  too  remote  from  the  soil — '  there  is 
no  health  in  us/  ' 

"  Oh  come,  Uncle  John,  don't  talk  as  if  we  were  Aztecs, 
or  an  effete  monarchy." 

"We  are  effete,  and  we  deserve  to  die  out  root  and 
branch." 

The  little  movement  over  in  the  dark  corner  passed  un 
noticed  in  Ethan's  attempt  at  protest. 

"Or  perhaps  you  think,"  said  John  Gano,  "because  we 
are  not  of  noble  descent,  that  being  an  old  or  rather  a  long 
dominant  and  idle  race,  doesn't  count." 

He  smiled  with  a  tinge  of  superior  pity. 

"How  do  you  know  we're  so  old  a  family  ?"  demanded 
his  nephew. 

"I  feel  it  in  my  bones  ;  they  ache — they  ache."  He  had 
begun  the  sentence  with  a  hoarse  laugh,  and  at  the  end  his 
haggard  face  settled  into  lines  of  pain.  "But  whether 
we're  an  old  family  in  the  paltry  social  sense  is  beside  the 
mark.  Nature  doesn't  care  a  continental  copper,"  he  went 
on  fiercely,  "whether  you're  a  king  or  a  bankrupt  cotton- 
planter,  or  any  other  cumberer  of  the  earth.  What  people 
don't  realize  is  that  a  peasant  or  a  rag-picker  may  come  of 
an  idle,  worn-out  stock,  and  if  so,  be  sure  Nature  has 
marked  him  down.  If  purple  and  fine  linen  don't  deceive 
her,  neither  do  rags.  No  sickly  sentimentality  about  her. 
She'll  find  her  enemy,  the  unfit,  thvough  any  and  all  dis- 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

guise.  As  for  your  aristocrat,  she  won't  distinguish  him 
even  by  her  revenge.  She  has  nothing  to  do  with  that 
figment  of  the  pompous  mind,  'belonging  to  an  old  family/ 
Families  are  all  old.  The  question  is  :  How  closely  are  you 
related  to — well,  to  use  the  ready-made  phrase  :  How  near 
are  yon  to  the  soil  ? — to  the  fountain-head  of  blood  made 
sweet  by  denial  and  swift  by  strenuous  living  ?  Ah,  my 
boy,  our  fathers  sat  too  long  at  their  ease  in  houses  that 
the  building  and  the  tending  of  made  muscle  and  brawn 
for  others.  We  lounged  in  arm-chairs  by  our  fires  of  fat 
Southern  pine,  but  the  men  who  got  the  vital  warmth  were 
the  men  who  hewed  the  tall  trees  down.  We've  blinded 
our  eyes  over  books,  and  blunted  our  humanity  in  a  petty 
concern  about  our  souls,  while  our  bodies  were  going  to 
destruction." 

There  was  dead  silence  for  a  few  minutes. 
'And  those  more  fortunate  ones/'  his  nephew  said,  in  a 
dull,  resentful  voice,  '-'who  are  they?     How  is  it  possible 
to  be  sure?     How  shall  your^lec^kc  known  ?• 

"As  of  old,  by  their  fruits.  They  and  their  children 
have  broad  shoulders  ;  they  haven't  chests  like  ours — they 
haven't  hands  like  mine." 

He  held  his  up,  and  both  men  (the  girl,  too,  in  the  far 
corner)  saw  the  fire  glow  red  behind  the  thin,  transparent 
fingers.  He  dropped  them  with  an  air  of  one  who  throws 
np  a  desperate  game.  Val  pushed  aside  the  rug  that  still 
partly  covered  her,  and  slid  to  the  ground,  arrested  on  the 
sofa's  edge  by  Ethan's  saying  more  angrily  than  she  had 
thought  that  voice  could  sound  : 

'"  I  tell  you  straight,  Uncle  John,  I  don't  accept  this 
paralyzing  doctrine  of  yours,  still  less  do  I  think  your  chil 
dren  will.  I  tell  you  frankly  I  rebel  against— 

John  Gano's  wax-white  hand  caught  him  by  the  shoulder 
in  a  grip  that  made  the  young  man  wince. 

"So  did  /rebel,  and  I've  been  paying  for  it  these  sixteen 
years.  Oh  yes,  I  knew  very  little,  but  I  rebelled  against 
the  little  I  knew.  I  did  worse — I  married.  I  did  worse 
even  than  that— /  married  my  first  cousin." 

337 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

He  drew  off,  as  if  the  better  to  watch  the  effect  of  his 
words.  Ethan,  looking  at  him  darkly,  felt  there  was  a 
devilish  ingenuity  in  his  uncle's  ignoring  the  possibility  of 
any  further  mixing  of  Gano  blood,  and  yet  holding  up  his 
own  misdeed  as  a  hideous  warning  to  the  world  in  general, 
a  thing  of  unmitigated  evil. 

"  These  matters  were  not  understood  in  my  day,"  he 
went  on,  l '  but  happily  the  men  and  women  of  these  times 
are  not  left  in  darkness." 

"Oh  yes,  they  are/'  said  Ethan.  "The  men  and  the 
women  are  new,  but  the  darkness  is  the  old  darkness." 

"No  ;  science  has  put  it  to  rout.  I  had  no  one  when  I 
was  young  to  tell  me  the  things  I'm  telling  you." 

Ethan's  face  was  undisguisedly  satirical,  but  his  uncle 
was  oblivious. 

"The  Ganos  have  all  been  well-intentioned  people,  and 
yet  they  went  on  down  there  in  Virginia  and  Maryland, 
generation  after  generation,  marrying  their  own  cousins, 
breeding  ift  and  in/  iii>»— 4-v^.\,  you,  for  instance,  and  my 
children  are  more  like  brother  and  sister  than  cousins. 
You  are  even  nearer  than  some  brothers  and  sisters  are. 
You  each  have  in  you  the  concentrated  essence  of  a  single 
family's  strain.  As  I've  told  you,  when  I  look  at  my  inno 
cent  children,  I  could  curse  the  eternal  law  that  will  not 
let  me  pay  my  debt  alone.  If  we  rebel"— he  fastened  his 
lean  fingers  on  Ethan's  shoulder  again,  and  spoke  with 
growing  excitement — "if  we  rebel  against  that  command 
ment,  we  and  our  wretched  children  are  punished."  He 
released  his  grip,  but  with  eyes  bloodshot,  menacing,  he 
stood  over  the  young  man  still  :  "If  we  rebel,  instead  of 
dying  out  calmly  and  gently,  we'll  have  to  be  stamped  out." 

"  What  do  you  mean  ?" 

No  lounging  now  ;  the  young  man  sat  arrow-straight  and 
eagle-eyed. 

"I  mean  that  certainly  in  this  race  the  weakest  go  to 
the  wall.  We  Ganos  can't  compete." 

"I  wouldn't  if  I  were  Hercules.     I  loathe  competition." 

"  Exactly — exactly.     It's  the  very  cry  of  the  unlit." 

888 


THE  OPEN  QUESTION 

"I  deny  it.  It's  the  cry  of  the  man  willing  to  work 
without  ignoble  spurring,  who  doesn't  want  his  comrades' 
disaster  to  sweeten  victory,,  who  wants  to  be  fortunate,  as 
you  say,  without  blood-guiltiness." 

"When  that  sentiment  comes  of  strength,  my  friend,  it 
means  one  thing;  when  it  comes  of  weakness,  it  means  an 
other.  There's  hard  fighting  ahead,  and  Hercules  will  be 
to  the  fore.  He'll  be  needed.  The  Ganos  will  be  occupied 
in  hating  competition." 

Ethan  gave  vent  to  a  sound  of  stifled  indignation.  Val 
watched  him  with  suspended  breath.  His  uncle  watched 
him  calmly,  and  then  he  said  : 

"  A  Gano  can  inherit  money.  I  doubt  if  he  can  make 
it.  I  doubt  if  he  can  even  keep  it.  I  doubt  if  he  can  lose 
it  like  a  man.'' 

Ethan  winced,  recalling  the  days  of  the  lost  allowance, 
and  his  impotent  railing  at  destiny  while  he  starved  in  the 
streets  of  Paris. 

"There  isn't  the  shadow  of  a  doubt  what  the  end  of  our 
family  history  will  be,"  the  hoarse  voice  ended.  "Those 
of  us  who  aren't  ground  under  the  heel  of  poverty  will  be 
snuffed  out  by  disease." 

"My  God  !"  Ethan  broke  out;  "and  to  think  I  called 
yon  an  optimist  !  Why,  you're  just  such  another  as  Job, 
crying  out:  ''Let  the  day  perish  wherein  I  was  born.' 
' Oh,  that  I  had  given  up  the  ghost,  and  no  eye  seen  me'; 
or  the  Genevan  confessing  :  '  Ma  naissance  f ut  le  premier 
de  mes  malheurs.";  He  would  have  been  ready  to  swear 
that  he  was  writhing,  not  under  the  sense  of  an  impassible 
barrier  raised  between  him  and  some  concrete  coveted  good, 
but  at  being  confronted,  where  he  least  expected  it,  with  a 
new  aspect  of  the  ugliness  and  pain  and  helplessness  of  the 
human  lot.  "It  doesn't  seem  to  matter  which  way  one 
turns,"  he  burst  out;  "the  sound  loudest  in  one's  ears  is 
the  lament  of  all  the  generations  that  have  gone  up  and 
down  hunting  happiness,  till,  as  you  say,  they  fell  on  sleep. 
Whether  I  go  to  the  classics  or  read  the  new  philosophies, 
whether  it's  Socrates  or  Seneca  preaching  the  dignity  of 

339 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

death,  or  the  volcanic  Nietzsche  trying  gloomily  to  exalt 
self,  and  losing  himself  in  madness — whether  I  wander  the 
Old  World,  or  fly  for  better  things  to  the  New,  it's  the 
same  thing.  You  began  by  telling  me  life  was  beautiful 
and  good ;  you  have  ended  by  showing  me  afresh  that  it 
simply  doesn't  bear  being  thought  about.  Why,  Val !" 

He  had  risen  and  caught  sight  of  the  white,  tear-drowned 
face  looking  out  behind  the  chair. 

"Val !"  echoed  her  father;  "  I  thought  you  were  in  bed  !" 

"Oh,  I  wish  I  had  been  !"  She  came  out  of  the  corner 
with  her  plumage  of  brave  looks  crushed  and  broken,  all 
her  young  brightness  tarnished.  "  Father,"  she  said,  while 
the  tears  rained  down,  "  I'm  sorry  you're  so  sad  about  the 
world,  and  about  all  us  Ganos,  but  you  needn't  try  to  make 
cousin  Ethan  sad  too,  and  me — and  me — 

Ethan  made  a  gesture  forward,  as  if  to  take  the  girl  in 
his  protecting  arms.  John  Gano's  angry  eyes  flashed 
warning.  He  tried  to  hush  his  daughter's  sobbing  in  his 
breast. 

"You  are  my  wise  little  girl,  and  you — " 

"Wise  !  Yes  ;  a  great  deal  too  wise  to  believe  all  this. 
I  doii't  know  why  I'm  crying  so/'  She  looked  up,  smiling 
miserably  through  her  tears.  "  Why,  it's  just  nothing  but 
arguing.  When  cousin  Ethan's  with  me  he  never  has  such 
awful,  awful  notions.  He's  a  little  sad  sometimes,  and  has 
to  be  cheered  up,  and  you  oughtn't  to  argue  with  him  like 
this-" 

The  heaving  sobs  clutched  her  voice,  stifling  the  last 
words. 

"Come,  come,  child;  you're  over-excited.  There  — 
there!" 

"When  I'm  old" — she  flung  back  her  head  with  a  poor 
little  travesty  of  her  common  gesture — "I'll  tell  my  chil 
dren — all  of  them — that  it's  been  a  good  world  to  be  in, 
and  that  they're  not  to  be  afraid,  and— and  not  to  be  any 
sadder  than  they  can  help." 

"  Come,  come  ;  dry  your  eyes  and  go  to  bed." 

She  turned  away  with  her  handkerchief  over  her  face. 

840 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"Good-night,  little  cousin,"  said  Ethan,  steadying  his 
voice  and  taking  her  hand. 

"Oh,  good-night/'  she  faltered,  and  with  a  movement 
full  of  exquisite  young  tenderness  she  lifted  her  little  hand 
kerchief  and  brushed  it  lightly  across  his  misty  eyes. 
11  Father  was  only  arguing,'7  she  said. 

But  the  tears  flowed  down  her  cheeks  afresh  as  she 
opened  the  door  and  went  out. 


CHAPTER  XXIII 

Two  days  later  Ethan  was  on  his  way  South  with  John 
Gano. 

lie  stayed  with  his  uncle  for  a  month,  and  then  sent  for 
the  despised  Drouet,  who  was  an  excellent  nurse.  As  he 
grew  weaker,  John  Gano  developed  not  only  a  tolerance, 
but  a  liking,  for  the  alert,  amusing  Frenchman,  and  stayed 
contentedly  in  the  quarters  Ethan  had  found,  until  the 
spring,  making  a  herbarium  of  the  flora  of  that  region.  At 
the  beginning  of  May  he  was  to  return  home.  Early  in 
April,  Drouet  wired  to  his  master  in  Boston  to  say  that  the 
doctor  was  alarmed  at  the  patient's  condition.  Ethan  went 
South  at  once,  and  three  days  after  his  arrival  his  uncle 
died  in  his  arms. 

"Don't  drag  me  back  to  the  Xorth,"  he  had  said ;  "  bury 
me  where  I  fall."  And  it  was  done. 

Mrs.  Gano  was  too  ill  to  travel,  and  telegraphed  that 
Ethan  was  to  come  back  afterwards  to  the  Fort. 

It  was  a  very  different  arrival  from  the  last.  The  little 
cousins,  dressed  in  black,  looked  more  than  ever  like  snow 
flowers  on  the  fringe  of  winter. 

Mrs.  Gano  was  profoundly  moved  on  seeing  Ethan  enter 
ing  alone.  She  motioned  the  children  out  of  the  room, 
and  had  one  long  talk  with  her  grandson  about  the  end. 
Afterwards,  in  her  fashion  when  she  was  suffering  most, 
she  shut  herself  up,  and  no  one  except  the  servants  saw 
her  until  the  following  Sunday,  which  was  Easter. 

It  struck  Ethan  as  curious,  and  unexpected,  that  even 
the  girls  should  put  such  restraint  upon  their  grief.  Em 
mie,  it  was  true,  was  often  seen  in  tears,  but  the  most  she 
ever  said  of  her  father  was,  "He  knows  there's  a  heaven 

342 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 


grandmother,  and  Ethan  caught  himself  smiling  surrepti 
tiously  at  the  old-fashioned  decorum  she  imposed  upon  her 
self  in  playing  the  unaccustomed  role. 

Emmie  was  to  be  confirmed  this  Easter.  She  was  going 
through  a  very  devout  phase,  and,  when  Val  was  not  there, 
she  talked  to  Ethan  about  the  coming  consecration  with  a 
curious  religious  fervor.  There  was  a  strain  of  unconscious 
mysticism  in  the  girl  that  struck  Ethan  oddly,  against  the 
bare  American  background.  It  was  to  him  more  of  an 
anachronism  than  any  manifestation  he  had  yet  encoun 
tered,  even  at  the  Fort,  that  stronghold  of  the  past. 

"  I  love  to  talk  about  these  things  to  you,  cousin  Ethan/' 
she  said  ;  "  Val  doesn't  understand/' 

Learning  something  of  these  confidences,  Mrs.  Gano  took 
the  first  opportunity  of  saying,  privately  : 

"I  do  not  know  quite  where  you  stand,  my  dear  Ethan, 
in  matters  of  religious  faith — "  and  she  waited. 

"  I  don't  know  quite  where  I  stand  myself,"  he  had 
answered. 

"  You  used  to  have  a  fine  perception  for  things  spiritual." 

He  smiled. 

"  I  once  thought  I  might  find  Rome  at  the  end  of  my 
wandering." 

"  Ah  \"  she  said,  quite  calmly,  "  my  father  used  to  say, 
'You  will  all  have  to  come  back  to  Mother  Church." 

"  I  do  not  mean  that  I  felt  like  that  long,"  Ethan  said, 
hurriedly,  realizing  that  he  was  sailing  under  false  colors, 
"  or  that  I  think  now  as  I  suppose  you  do.  It's  probably 
little  more  with  me  than  that  'I  was  born  in  the  wilds  of 
Christianity,  and  the  briers  and  thorns  still  hang  about  me."3 

"  You  got  that  from  your  Uncle  John,"  she  said,  coldly. 

"  No  ;  it  was  said  the  century  before  he  was  born." 

"  To  me,  God  is  the  great  fact  of  life.  To  be  without 
God  is  to  be  without  hope  in  the  world.'" 

Ethan  shaded  his  lowered  eyes  with  one  hand  as  he 
answered  : 

"  Yes,  Fve  thought  that,  too." 

343 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

She  looked  at  him  reassured. 

"All  !  I  have  ceased  to  be  troubled  at  minor  differences 
of  creed  ;  but  when  we  are  young,  we  are  less — catholic," 
she  smiled,  and  then  grew  grave.  "  I  hope  you  will  never 
say  anything  to  unsettle  the  faith  of  the  little  girls." 

"  Oh,  I  shouldn't  dream—  But  Val  has  not  'been  con 
firmed,  I  understand." 

"  No  ;  I  don't  believe  any  longer  in  pressing  these  things." 

"  She  would  have  required  pressing  ?" 

"She  has  not  developed  any  great  concern  about  spirit 
ual  matters.  And  yet,  as  a  child,  she  was  much  occupied 
about  religion.  Xot  as  you  and  Emmie  were.  With  Val 
it  was  all  the  wrong  way  up." 

"  Wrong  way — 

Mrs.  Gano  nodded,  reflectively. 

"  Her  interest  in  the  Bible  seemed  founded  upon  the 
large  opportunity  it  gave  her  for  the  exercise  of  rank  un 
belief.  I  was  always  hoping  to  overcome  the  tendency. 
But" — she  shook  her  head — "if,  as  a  treat,  I  allowed  her 
to  choose  what  portion  of  the  Scripture  should  be  read 
aloud,  it  was  always  the  Revelation." 

"  Oh,  I  don't  think  that  so  depraved." 

"  Neither  did  I,  till  one  Sunday,  as  I  got  to  the  words, 
'And  I,  John,  saw,'  I  was  arrested  by  a  movement  from 
the  child  sitting  at  my  feet.  I  looked  down  and  saw  the 
small  face  puckered  with  the  concentrated  essence  of  sus 
picion.  'Who  saw  it  'sides  John  ?'  she  demanded.  And 
that,  briefly,  has  been  her  attitude  ever  since.  I  lament 
it,  but  I  don't  talk  to  her  about  it  any  more.  The  one 
Christian  tenet  that  I  am  satisfied  Val  holds  is  the  doctrine 
of  the  Resurrection.  Strange — strange  !  Xow,  Emmie  is 
like  all  the  rest  of  the  Ganos." 

Ethan  nodded.  "  Yes,  Val  is  a  stranger  among  us. 
Poor  Val  !" 

Emmie  was  certainly  a  vision  of  innocent  loveliness,  as 
she  went  up  to  the  chancel  that  Easter  morning,  to  be 
received  into  the  communion  of  the  faithful.  There  was 
something  poetic,  something  not  wholly  of  this  world,  in 

344 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

her  fragile  beauty,  her  rapt  and  lighted  look.  Ethan  rec 
ognized  in  the  sweet  face — never  so  unclouded  as  to-day — 
the  subtle  ecstasy  of  the  devotee.  Something  in  him  stirred 
painfully,  regretfully,  answering  to  it  with  a  sense  of  un 
willing  sympathy,  of  kinship  that  would  not  be  denied. 
People  in  the  church  that  day  whispered  to  each  other  : 

"Emmie  Gano  and  her  cousin  are  more  alike  than  most 
brothers  and  sisters  are." 

Very  different  was  the  mutinous  face  of  the  elder  girl, 
sitting  beside  Ethan  in  her  mourning,  looking  neither  at 
bishop  nor  white -robed  brides  of  the  Church,  but  with 
unreconciled,  tear-filled  eyes  at  the  white  cross,  in  memory 
of  her  father,  that  hung  among  the  Easter  decorations  in 
the  chancel.  The  wreath  upon  the  lectern,  that  all  the 
town  knew  to  be  the  annual  "  In  memoriam"  to  that 
Valeria  Gano  who  had  been  in  her  grave  these  twenty 
years — for  that,  only  Ethan  of  the  dead  woman's  kindred 
had  eyes  and  tender  remembering. 

"  Father's  cross  looked  very  beautiful,"  Emmie  said,  in 
a  hushed  voice,  to  her  grandmother  that  afternoon. 

Mrs.  Gano  inclined  her  head. 

"  I  am  glad  we  chose  calla  lilies ;  he  loved  them,"  mur 
mured  Emmie. 

"He  didn't  love  to  hear  them  called  calla  lilies/' said 
Val,  without  a  particle  of  feeling  in  her  voice. 

"  Yes,"  said  Emmie,  "  I  mean  those  great — 

"He  would  be  very  angry  to  hear  you  call  them  lilies.'* 

"  Angry  ?"     Mrs.  Gano  looked  up. 

"Yes,  angry,"  said  Val.  "  Callas  are  not  liliaceas,  they 
are  aracese,  and  belong  to  the  Jack-in-the-pulpit  family. 
If  he  hears  us,  he'll  hate  to  think  we've  forgotten  so  soon." 
Her  defiant  eyes  suddenly  filled  up.  "He  taught  us  not 
to  be  so  ignorant  as  to  call  them  lilies,  just  as  he  taught  us 
not  to  say  (  wisteria."' 

"  What  are  you  to  say,  then  ?"  asked  Ethan. 

"  Wistaria." 

"Not  really?" 

"  Yes,  it  is  wistaria,  and  we  must  all  say  wistaria,  be- 

345 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

cause  he  told  us  to,  and  because  it's  named  after  General 
Wistar." 

"  Why  have  you  put  these  fine  linen  doilies  on  the  arms 
of  the  chairs  ?"  asked  Mrs.  Gano. 

"  Because  the  arms  are  covered  with  velvet,"  Val  an 
swered,  without  thinking,  and  then  shot  a  shy  look  at 
Ethan. 

"  Velvet  ?     Of  course.     What  then  ?" 

Val  looked  in  her  lap  and  said,  mendaciously  : 

"  I  don't  like  velvet  arms.     Please  let  the  doilies  stay." 

Mrs.  Gano  was  satisfied  in  her  own  mind  that  Val  was 
ashamed  of  the  condition  of  the  ancient  covering.  The 
difficulty  plainly  was  that  it  had  been  velvet.  She  forbore 
to  pursue  the  question  before  her  grandson. 

The  days  went  on  ;  Ethan  refused  to  count  them. 

One  late  afternoon  a  deluge  of  rain  brought  down  a  part 
of  the  ceiling  in  the  old  red  room  that  had  been  John 
Gano's.  Ethan  took  his  courage  in  both  hands,  and  de 
scribed  to  Mrs.  Gano,  in  forcible  terms,  the  extent  of  the 
damage  and  the  danger  of  leaving  the  roof  as  it  was. 

"  I  don't  propose  to  leave  it  as  it  is." 

He  studied  her. 

"  Do  you  remember  telling  me  when  I  was  a  little  chap 
that  this  was  my  home  ?" 

"  H'm— did  I  ?" 

"  I  haven't  any  other  now.  Let  me  think  of  the  Fort  as 
my  home."  He  paused,  but  her  aspect  was  not  encouraging, 
was  hardly  hospitable.  He  went  on  :  "Let  me  look  after 
the  roof,  and — " 

"  Certainly  not.  I  have  looked  after  everything  for  half 
a  century.  When  I'm  dead  some  one  else  may  do  it — not 
before."' 

"Ah,  you  know  what  I  mean.  You've  lost  your  only 
eon.  Give  me  some  of  his  privileges."  She  jerked  away 
her  head,  as  she  did  when  she  was  moved,  and  wanted  not 
to  betray  the  fact.  "  I  am  tired  of  being  homeless,"  Ethan 
said. 

"You  will  make  a  home  of  your  own,  my  dear." 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

' '  I  want  this  for  my  home." 

She  turned  suddenly,  and  looked  at  him  with  eyes  that 
were  keen  and  intent  under  their  film  of  tears. 

"No,"  she  said,  slowly,  "this  does  for  us.  It  is  not  the 
kind  of  home  for  you." 

"It  is  the  kind  I  want." 

He  smiled  in  that  sudden,  radiant  way  of  his. 

"No  ;  the  Fort  is  here  to  shelter  and  protect  other  peo 
ple.  You  don't  need  it." 

"But  I  do  ;  and  it's  my  Fort.  Why,  you've  never  even 
taken  my  name  off  the  door." 

The  old  woman  recalled  a  glimpse  she  had  had  the  even 
ing  before  of  Val  laying  her  cheek  against  the  graven 
name. 

"I'm  not  sure  but  I  shall  take  it  off,"  she  said,  half 
smiling,  half  threatening. 

"  You  don't  want  to  get  me  out  of  the  habit  of  thinking 
of  the  Fort  as  'home'?" 

"You've  never  really  been  in  the  habit — you  belong  else 
where." 

He  studied  her  in  perplexity. 

"Do  you  realize  that  at  this  moment  the  rain  is  coming 
in  floods  into  Uncle  John's  room  ?" 

"  The  rain  won't  trouble  your  uncle  John."  She  had 
turned  away  again. 

"  But  there  are  others  here — 

"It  is  those  others  I  have  to  consider.  Your  uncle 
John's  insurance  will  mend  his  children's  roof." 

"Arid  you  won't  give  me  the  happiness— 

"My  dear  boy/"  she  said,  with  some  impatience,  "your 
happiness  doesn't  lie  here." 

She  began  to  rock  back  and  forth  with  lowering  brow. 

"You  want  to  get  rid  of  me." 

She  stopped  rocking,  and  turned  to  him  with  a  moved 
and  gentler  aspect. 

"'Personally,  I  very  much  want  you  to  stay  ;  but  there 
are  many  things  to  think  of.  I  am  not  alone  here.  You 
bring  an  atmosphere  of — of  unrest  from  out  the  world  you 

347 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

belong  to.  I  see  the  danger  that  you  may  import  some  of 
it  into  our  quiet  lives." 

"  How  little  you  realize  !  The  young  life  here  is  seeth 
ing  with  unrest." 

"That  is  what  I  am  realizing." 

"But  I  found  it  like  that." 

She  shook  her  head. 

"You  must  go  away,  my  dear." 

She  was  of  the  same  mind,  then,  as  her  son  had  been. 
Go  away  !  go  away  !  That  was  all  the  welcome  they  had 
here  for  Ethan  Gano.  A  feeling  of  bitterness  took  hold 
on  him,  of  such  loneliness  that  it  was  as  if,  without  warn 
ing,  he  had  heard  pronounced  a  sentence  of  perpetual  ex 
ile.  "  For  that's  what  it  is,"  he  thought  :  "she  will  never 
ask  me  to  come  again."  And  he  was  right — she  never  did. 

He  had  got  up  after  a  moment  or  two,  and  gone  out  to 
the  veranda,  where  he  walked  up  and  down,  with  the  noise 
of  the  rain  in  his  ears. 

Presently  Emmie  looked  out. 

"Where's  Val  ?"  asked  Ethan. 

"Up-stairs.  Ever  since  supper  she's  been  seeing  if  the 
tubs  and  things  are  under  all  the  leaks." 

"Ask  her  to  come  out  here  when  she's  finished,  will 
you  ?" 

"  Yes,"  said  Emmie  reluctantly,  and  turned  away. 

Ethan  had  no  eyes  for  the  sudden  shadow  on  the  sweet 
face.  lie  began  to  stride  up  and  down  again,  angrily, 
eagerly,  lookiyg  out  through  the  tracery  of  the  wistaria  as 
an  animal  might  through  the  bars  of  its  cage. 

"Well,  here  lam!"' 

Val  stood  smiling  as  he  turned. 

"  Oh,  good  !     Let  us  sit  down." 

"  On  the  black  benches  ?     Never  !" 

She  gathered  her  skirts  round  her  with  a  gesture  of  comic 
horror. 

"Here,  then"  -he  spread  out  a  large  white  handker 
chief — "sit  on  this." 

;MS 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

e(  And  yon  ?" 

"  Sit  down  !"  he  commanded. 

She  took  the  place  meekly,  with  hands  crossed  in  mock 
ery,  arid  laughing  eyes,  but  her  pale  cheeks  flushed. 

"Now,  you  are  to  promise  me  something,"  he  said, 
standing  before  her  with  folded  arms. 

"  Oh,  I've  always  got  to  promise  you  things.  What 
have  you  ever  promised  me  ?" 

His  moody  eyes  caressed  the  upturned  face. 

"  What  do  you  want  me  to  promise  ?"  he  said,  more 
gently. 

"  Will  you  do  it  ?" 

"  I— a—" 

"You  seer 

"I  only  want  to  know  what  it  is." 

She  looked  away. 

"Tell  me  what  you  want  first,"  she  said. 

Instead  of  answering,  her  cousin  turned  and  walked  to  the 
end  of  the  dripping  veranda,  where  the  wind  had  blown  the 
rain  in  several  feet  across  the  boards.  She  watched  him 
furtively,  biting  her  upper  lip  the  while,  catching  it  cruel 
ly  with  her  sharp  white  teeth  to  still  its  trembling.  She 
watched  him  turn  slowly,  come  back  a  few  paces,  raising 
his  eyes  as  he  was  passing  the  first  of  the  long  room  win 
dows,  and  stop  short  with  a  queer,  guilty  start.  He  nodded 
gravely  to  the  watchful  eyes  within  and  continued  his 
walk,  only  more  rapidly,  muttering  to  himself,  "  The  old 
lioness  !" 

Val  had  an  impulse  to  go  and  look  through  the  window 
nearest  her,  but  something  held  her  where  she  was.  Pres 
ently,  as  Ethan  paced  back  arid  forth,  a  pale  shine  came 
through  the  panes,  mixing  uncertainly  with  the  evening 
light.  Verne  must  have  taken  in  the  big  bronze  lamp. 
Yes,  one  could  hear  her  now  letting  down  the  blinds. 
Val  was  glad  she  had  resisted  the  impulse  to  look  in. 
Ethan  had  stopped  his  restless  pacing,  as  soon  as  the 
blinds  were  drawn. 

"I  have  asked  her,"  he  said,  with  a  motion  of  the  head 

349 


Til  K    OPEN    QUESTION' 

towards  the  long  room,  "to  let  me  attend  to  the  roof, 
and  a  few  little  things  like  that."  He  paused,  and  looked 
sharply  at  the  shrouded  windows. 

"$he  says  you  take  a  great  deal  upon  yourself,''  Val 
smiled. 

"  Oh,  she  does  !  Well,  I  shall  take  more.  I  am  going  to 
take  the  liberty  of  giving  you  five  hundred  dollars,  to  do 
what  you  can  here  without  her  knowing  ;  and  wheivs  it's 
gone  I  shall  give  you  as  much  again,  and  you're  not  to  tell 
anybody.  Promise." 

"I  couldn't  do  that." 

"Why  not?" 

"Simply,  I  couldn't.  I  know  so  well  what  she'd  say — 
'It's  against  all  our  traditions/  And  the  money  you  are 
offering — " 

"Well?" 

"You  see,  ?7'x  Tdllmadye  money!"  Val  resented  a  little 
his  whimsical  look.  She  drew  herself  up.  "You  can't 
expect  us  Ganos — "  She  broke  off  as  he  took  a  letter  out 
of  his  pocket  and  unfolded  it.  "Oh.!"  She  turned  a  sud 
den  scarlet  and  grasped  at  the  incriminating  document. 

"No,  no,"  he  said.  "I  was  defrauded  of  this  letter  a 
long  time  by  an  imbecile  postal  system.  But  I'll  take  good 
care  of  it  now  I  have  got  it." 

"I — I  was  very  young  when  I  wrote  it." 

" — a  little  over  a  year  ago,"  he  completed  her  sentence, 
laughing. 

"  Please  don't  think  I'm  wanting  you  to  help  me  now." 

"Well,  that's  a  good  thing,"  he  said,  with  an  unexpect 
ed  hardness,  "for  I  haven't  the  smallest  intention  of  do 
ing  so." 

Val's  eyes  were  angry  and  bright  with  drops  of  humilia 
tion. 

"I  wouldn't  take  it  if  you  begged  me  to,"  she  said. 

"  Don't  you  see,  dear  Val " — he  leaned  nearer,  but  she 
averted  her  face  from  him — "don't  you  see  that,  at  all 
events  until  Emmie  is  older,  you  can't  desert  the  Fort  ?" 
No  answer.  ^  Don't  be  angry  with  me,  little  cousin. 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

Don't  yon  feel  how  much  your  own  people  need  yon  ?" 
Still  no  answer.  "  Seventy  -  five  !"  he  went  on;  "yon 
mayn't  have  long  to  wait." 

She  turned  on  him  sharply. 

"As  if  I  grudged — as  if  I  wanted  to  shorten  the  time  I" 

She  swallowed  a  little  sob. 

"  No,  no  ;  of  course  you  don't.  I  understand  you  quite 
well." 

"The  last  thing  father  said  to  me  was,  'Take  care  of 
her,  she's  growing  old."J 

He  nodded. 

"That's  all  I  mean  by  putting  this  money  into  your 
hands." 

"Oh,  but  I  can't  take  five  hund—  I  understand  better 
than  I  did  when  I  wrote  that  stupid  letter ;  she'd  half  kill 
me  !" 

"  She's  not  to  know,  and  I " — he  glowered  down  at  her 
with  a  laugh — "  I'll  half  kill  you  if  you  don't  do  what  I 
tell  you." 

She  looked  in  her  lap.     Her  eyelids  fluttered. 

"  You  must  write  me  regularly,  and  tell  me  all  that's 
happening." 

She  lifted  her  head  as  if  she  had  been  stung. 

"You — you  aren't  going  away  !" 

"Yes." 

"  Wheil  are  you  coming  back  ?" 

"I  don't  know." 

The  dull  rain  poured,  the  defective  spouts  at  the  eaves 
played  gray  fountains,  the  great  tulipifera  rhododendron 
waved  answering  arms  to  the  signals  of  the  storm. 

In  the  momentary  lull,  An'  Jerusha  in  the  kitchen  could 
be  heard  quavering  out  wild  notes,  among  which  Ethan 
recognized  the  words  : 

"No  mo'  peace  on  de  earf." 

"I  don't  believe  you'll  go,"  said  Val. 
He  couldn't  see  her  face  so  well  now  in  the  gray  light. 
"  What  makes  you  believe  I  won't  go  ?" 

351 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

She  clasped  her  hands  and  wrung  them  unconsciously. 

"VaW 

"  Or,  if  you  go,  you'll  come  back  ?" 

"  Don't  you  know  that's  what  I  must  not  do  ?" 

"  No,"  she  said,  in  a  muffled  but  resolute  voice. 

They  sat  silent,  motionless,  for  some  time.  She  turned 
at  last  with  wide,  shining  eyes,  putting  her  face  close  to  his 
in  the  uncertain  light,  and  saying,  with  a  quick -drawn 
breath  : 

"Why,  cousin  Ethan  !" 

"What  is  it?'" 

"Why  do  you  look  like  that  ?" 

"Like  what  ?" 

"  So — so  terribly  unhappy." 

He  didn't  answer. 

"What's  the  matter?" 

He  tried  to  say  something,  moved  his  lips  faintly,  but  no 
sound  came. 

"  Oh,  what  is  it  ?"  she  cried  ;  "something  new  ?" 

He  nodded,  echoing  :  "  Something  new,  and  something 
very,  very  old." 

"And  sad?" 

"  Saddest  of  all  sad  things." 

"What  is?" 

"  Haven't  you  ever  heard  ?     Love  is  the  sr  eldest  of  all." 

A  ray  of  light  fell  like  a  sword  between  thtfm,  and  a 
sharp  rap  on  the  window  at  their  backs  made  them  fly  to 
their  feet.  Turning,  they  saw  Mrs.  Gano's  face  against  the 
pane.  She  had  lifted  a  corner  of  the  blind,  and  was  beck 
oning  with  imperious  hand. 

"  I  must  go,"  whispered  Yal ;  and  she  vanished. 

Ethan  walked  up  and  down  till  the  early  bed  hour,  lis 
tening  to  the  rain  and  to  the  sound  of  An'  Jerusha's 
crooning. 


CHAPTER  XXIV 

EMMIE  had  begun  to  teach  a  class  in  the  Infant  Sunday- 
school.  She  would  go  off  soon  after  breakfast,  the  others 
following  an  hour  or  so  later,  and  meeting  her  at  morning 
service. 

"  I  don't  think  Fll  go  to-day,"  said  Ethan  the  subsequent 
Sunday.  "  Why  don't  you  take  a  holiday,  too  ?" 

"No,"  answered  Val.  "If  I  stay  at  home  grandma 
will —  But  you  might  walk  part  way  with  me,  mightn't 
you  ?" 

"  Yes,  I  don't  mind  a  walk.  I'll  take  a  book  along  and 
go  up  on  the  Hill  after  I  leave  you." 

As  they  set  off,  Mrs.  Gano  stood  at  the  window  looking 
after  them.  Ethan  made  her  a  little  half-mocking  bow, 
whereat  she  smiled  grimly. 

Val,  glancing  back  at  her,  said,  "  Though  you  do  pre 
tend  to  be  so  gloomy,  you  always  put  other  people  into  bet 
ter  spirits.  I  haven't  seen  her  smile  since — not  since.  .  .  . 
She  cares  more  for  you  than  she  does  for  anybody." 

"She  won't  be  sorry  when  I  go." 

Val  flashed  a  side  look  at  him,  and  the  brightness  dimmed 
in  her  eyes.  But  here  was  Miss  Tibbs,  hurrying  by  with  a 
sharp  glance  and  "  Good-morning,"  and  other  people  pass 
ing  on  their  way  home  from  Sunday-school.  She  mustn't 
cry  in  public. 

"You  oughtn't  to  say  that  she  won't  be  sorry.  You 
ought  to  be  gratef uller  to  people  for  caring  so  tremendously 
for  you — as  she  does."  Her  heart  seemed  to  be  beating 
high  up  in  her  throat.  "Emmie  and  I  often  notice  how 
she  lets  you  do  all  the  forbidden  things — pick  the  myrtle 
and  narcissus,  play  as  loud  and  as  hard  as  you  like  on  the 
z  353 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

piano,  have  sangaree  and  julep  when  you  aren't  a  bit  ill " 
— she  was  trying  to  laugh — "even  lets  you  go  through  the 
bookcases  and  take  out  anything  you  like/' 

She  glanced  down  at  the  book  in  his  hand.  He  made  no 
rejoinder.  A  side  glance  at  his  face  showed  him  with 
brows  knitted  and  abstracted  eyes. 

Suddenly  the  dark  face  lit  up;  he  had  caught  sight  of  a 
charming  apparition  over  the  way.  Julia  was  crossing  the 
street  "just  in  time  to  meet  Ethan,"  thought  Val,  al 
though  her  friend  was  coming  from  her  Sunday-school 
class,  at  the  usual  time,  and  by  the  usual  route. 

"  Good-morning,"  Ethan  called  out  with  a  cheerfulness 
that  made  Val's  heart  drop  in  an  instant,  down — down. 

"  You  two  pious  ones  off  to  church  ?"  asked  Julia,  as  she 
shook  hands  with  them. 

"  Not  me,"  answered  Ethan  ;  "  it's  too  fine  a  day  to  waste 
in  church.'7 

"Just  what  I  think,"  said  Julia,  wistfully. 

How  bewitchingly  pretty  she  looked  in  her  field-flower 
hat  and  leaf -green  gown  !  Val  felt  dowdy  and  dull  in  her 
mourning;  it  was  an  insult  to  the  fair  summer  weather  to 
go  about  in  such  clothes.  No  wonder  cousin  Ethan  had 
brightened  as  he  looked  at  Julia. 

They  were  all  walking  on  together  now  to  the  Otways' 
gate.  Val  breathed  a  silent  prayer  of  thankfulness  that 
Julia  was  a  Presbyterian. 

"  What  are  you  going  to  do,  Mr.  Gano,  if  you  don't  go 
to  church  ?"  asked  Miss  Otway,  leaning  across  Val,  who 
walked  in  the  middle. 

"  Find  a  comfortable  place  under  a  tree." 

"And  read  that  very  un-Biblical-looking  book  ?" 

They  were  at  the  gate  now,  which  Ethan  opened  ;  but 
Julia  lingered,  in  spite  of  Val's  "Heavens!  is  that  the 
church-bell  ?" 

"  Mightn't  it  pass  for  a  hymnal  ?" 

He  laid  the  book  open  on  the  top  of  the  gate,  very  will 
ing  to  prolong  the  interview,  as  it  seemed,  in  spite  of  Yal's 
disingenuous  interjection,  "I'm  afraid  I'll  be  late." 

354 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  Too  cheerful  for  a  hymnal/'  said  Julia,  shaking  her 
head  and  smiling  up  into  his  eyes. 

"  Cheerful  only  on  the  outside,  I'll  be  bound/'  said 
Val,  suspiciously.  Then  turning  to  the  title-page  :  "  '  An 
Anthology  collected  by—  What  makes  you  like  reading 
poetry  ?" 

"Why,  don't  you  ?"  said  Ethan  to  them  both. 

"  Yes,  indeed,"  responded  Julia. 

"Not  a  bit/' said  Val. 

"  Why  not  ?"  laughed  Ethan. 

"Too  sad/' said  Val,  firmly. 

Julia  looked  pensively  away  from  Ethan  up  to  the  blue 
sky,  over  the  line  of  hills. 

"'I  love  sad  things,"  she  said,  sympathetically. 

te  Oh  yes,  you  like  'em  blubbery.  I  don't.  That's  why 
I  hate  poetry.  It's  all  sobbing  and  groaning,  and  '  Oh  !' 
and  '  Alas  !'  or  else  the  silly  scenery." 

"  Oh,  not  all,"  said  Ethan. 

"  Well,  most  of  it  is.  Now,  see  !  I'll  shut  the  book  and 
open  it  at  random  : 

"  'O  star,  of  which  I  lost  have  all  the  light, 
With  herte  sore  well  ought  I  to  bewail, 
That  ever  dark  in  torment,  night  by  night, 
Towards  my  death  with  wind  in  stern  I  sail.' 

That's  Mr.  Chaucer.     Now  try  again  : 

"  '  My  days  are  in  the  yellow  leaf ; 

The  flowers  and  fruits  of  love  are  gone  ; 
The  worm,  the  canker,  and  the  grief 
Are  mine  alone  !' 

That  cheerful  gentleman  is  Lord  Byron  !" 

She  shut  the  book  with  a  vicious  snap  and  opened  it 
again  : 

"  '  Out  of  the  day  and  night 
A  joy  has  taken  flight  : 

Fresh  spring,  and  summer,  and  winter  hoar, 
Move  my  faint  heart  with  grief,  but  with  delight 
No  more— O,  never  more  I' 
355 


THE    OPEN*    QUESTION* 

That's  Shelley's  account  of  things.     And  here's  Keats's  : 

"'The  weariness,  the  fever,  and  the  fret 

Here,  where  men  sit  and  hear  each  other  groan; 
Where  but  to  think  is  to  be  full  of  sorrow 
And  leaden-eyed  despairs.' " 

"Oh,  but  aren't  there  any  ballads  and  pretty  stories  ?" 
asked  Julia. 

"  Well,  here's  the  <  Pot  of  Basil '  and  '  Waly  Waly  ' : 
Val  turned  the  pages  vindictively — "and  all  the  rest  of  the 
desperate   and  deserted.     Now,  the  man   that  made  this 
anthology" — she  turned  sharply  to  her  cousin — "I  sup 
pose  he  got  together  all  the  best  tilings,  didn't  he  ?" 

"I  suppose  he  thought  he  did." 

"Do  you  think  he  succeeded  ?" 

"Very  fairly." 

"  H'm  !  You  see,  when  they  do  their  best  they  are 
bound  to  be  moaning  and  groaning,  these  poets.  Now,  the 
man  that  chose  these  things,  was  he  a  jaundiced  kind  of 
person,  very  sad  and  sorry  ?" 

"Quite  the  contrary.  I  should  say  he's  as  cheerful  as  a 
man  may  be  who  isn't  a  fool." 

Val  looked  at  him  a  moment. 

"  Then,  I  say  it's  a  good  thing  there  are  women  in  the 
world."  She  had  forgotten  the  third  person  for  the  mo 
ment,  forgotten  that  Julia,  too,  professed  to  like  things 
"  blubbery."  Even  when  she  remembered,  she  only  clapped 
the  book  to  and  said  :  "  Oh,  I  shall  be  so  late  !" 

"I  envy  you  your  walk."  Julia  tilted  up  her  round 
chin,  catching  in  her  loose  golden  hair  the  sunlight  that 
filtered  through  the  fresh  green  maple  leaves. 

"  I'm  going  up  on  the  Hill ;  you'd  both  of  you  better 
come." 

"Gracious  !  we'd  be  killed  if  we  did." 

"Yes,  indeed,"  agreed  Val,  with  conviction.  It  would 
be  too  dreadful  to  have  Julia  tacked  on  to  them  to-day. 
What  was  Ethan  thinking  of  ? 

"  I've  come  back  from  Sunday-school  to  take  my  mother 

356  " 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

to  church  ;  but  there  might  be  time  for  a  little  walk  after 
wards."     Julia's  air  was  charmingly  wistful. 

"Well,  come  towards  Plymouth  Hill,"  said  Ethan. 

If  it  was  anybody  else,  thought  Val,  angrily,  it  would 
have  to  be  called  flirting.  Julia,  too,  was  undoubtedly 
"making  eyes."  Ob,  it  was  disgraceful  ! 

"  I  don't  believe,  after  all,  there'll  be  time  before  din 
ner,"  Miss  Otway  was  saying. 

"  She  knows  perfectly  well  she's  going  to  make  time," 
thought  Val,  and  then — oh,  dear  I  oh,  dear  !  what  was  be 
coming  of  her  old  affection  for  her  friend  ? 

They  had  said  "  Good-bye,"  and  walked  on  in  silence  for 
a  few  moments.  She  noticed  with  a  passion  of  resentment 
that,  since  leaving  Julia,  the  cloud  had  settled  again  on 
her  cousin's  face. 

"Since  I'm  going  away  so  soon,  I  think  I  ought  to  say- 
he  began  presently,  and  stopped. 

"  Say  what  ?" 

"  That  Harry  Wilbur  has  taken  me  into  his  confidence." 

Val  turned  away  her  head. 

"First-rate  fellow,  Wilbur."  Another  pause.  "Fact 
is,  he  is  one  in  a  thousand." 

"  He's  very  good,  but  he  isn't  interesting." 

"  I  think  he  is,  you  know  ;  and  so  did  Uncle  John.  I 
believe  your  father  would  have  liked — 

"Do  you  like  talking  like  this  to  me  ?"  Val  demanded, 
darkly/ 'or" — with  a  ray  of  hope — "are  you  being  a  martyr?" 

"Something  of  a  martyr,  perhaps,"  he  said,  smiling  in 
spite  of  himself. 

"  Oh,  well,  that's  all  right,  just  for  once." 

"  For  once  ?" 

"  Yes  ;  please  don't  do  it  again.  I  can  admire  it — once, 
but  I  can't  be  of  any  help.  I  suppose  it's  because  of  what 
my  father  told  you  that  you  said  that — about — love." 

"  What  did  I  say  ?" 

"  That  it  was  the  saddest  of  all." 

"  I'm  afraid  the  reason  is  deeper  than  any  your  father 
gave." 

357 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

She  looked  up  baffled. 

"  At  least,  it's  because  of  what  my  father  said  that  you — 
that  you — began  about  Harry  Wilbur." 

"  \Vell,  perhaps." 

"  I'm  very  much  disappointed  in  you." 

"  I'm  very  sorry." 

"  I  thought  you  were  more — understanding.  If  you  had 
known  my  father  better,"  she  continued,  with  all-uncon 
scious  irony,,  "you  wouldn't  have  minded  him  a  bit.  It 
was  just  a  theory." 

"  Ah,  my  child,  it  isn't  a  theory  that  we're  first  cousins." 

The  note  of  finality  in  the  low  voice  pierced  her  through 
and  through. 

"  But  plenty  of  people — "  she  burst  out  ;  and  then  one 
by  one  her  father's  arguments  and  menaces,  like  curses, 
came  back  to  roost.  "  If  we  rebel  against  that  law,  we 
and  our  innocent  children  are  punished,"  she  seemed  to 
hear  him  say. 

They  walked  on  some  time  without  speaking.  Twice 
Ethan  glanced  down  at  the  face  beside  him.  For  all  its 
profound  trouble,  it  was  not  the  face  of  one  defeated.  He 
drew  a  perverse  pleasure  from  the  observation.  Curiosity 
had  from  the  first  played  no  small  part  in  the  charm  his 
cousin  cast  about  him.  What  would  she  do  under  such 
and  such  conditions  ?  And,  meanwhile,  what  new  long 
ing,  what  new  pain,  that  mutinous  little  face  had  planted 
in  his  heart  !  "I  have  never  kissed  her,"  he  kept  thinking 
as  he  looked  at  her  mouth.  "  Has  Wilbur  ever  kissed  her  ?" 
The  idea  was  revolting.  He  put  it  from  him.  He  thought 
of  the  people  that  never  have  children.  Suppose —  He 
looked  down  at  her  again.  This  time  he  caught  her  eye, 
and  she  flushed  hotly.  He  had  no  need  of  speech  to  assure 
him  they  had  been  thinking  along  the  same  lines. 

"  Of  course,"  said  Val,  with  an  obvious  effort,  "I  ought 
to  behave  as  if  I  didn't  understand  what's  involved.  Any 
nice  girl  would  pretend  she —  Her  voice  got  tangled  and 
lost  in  a  dry  little  sob  ;  but  she  burst  out  again  under  her 
breath:  "Oh,  they  aren't  like  me  —  the  nice  girls.  No- 

358 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

body  ever  cared  so  much  as  I  do.     Everything's  different 
when  you — when  you  care  like  this/7 

His  heart  contracted  sharply.  Had  this  come  into  his 
life  only  to  go  and  leave  him  stricken  in  poverty  ?  Under 
the  girPs  extravagance  of  speech  was  a  richness  of  nature 
that  gave  her  fierce  young  words  authority.  This  primi 
tive,  unfaltering  passion,  naked  and  unashamed,  was  not 
only  beautiful  in  his  eyes  with  a  kind  of  pagan  splendor., 
but  it  soothed  and  satisfied  his  weary,  doubting  spirit.  For 
the  moment  it  carried  his  questioning  down  its  swift  cur 
rent,  making  of  his  fears  a  mock,  and  whirling  his  heavy 
doubts  like  straws.  And  yet  he  kept  a  vigilant  watch  upon 
himself.  With  a  man's  abiding  fear  of  being  ridiculous, 
he  was  uncomfortably  conscious  of  the  little  group  of  be 
lated  church-goers  turning  into  St.  Thomas's  from  Market 
Street,  not  so  hurried  but  they  might  notice  VaPs  excited 
face.  To  his  companion,  in  her  absorption,  these  acquaint 
ances  had  been  thin  air. 

"I  dare  say  my  father  knew  that,  to  many  a  girl,  it 
wouldn't  really  matter  much  whether  she  married  Harry 
Wilbur,  or  any  other  nice  convenient  person  ;  but  to  me — 

"  Come  down  this  street,"  Ethan  said.  "  You  don't 
want  to  get  into  that  mob.'" 

He  felt  himself  to  be  in  one  of  those  positions  where  to 
turn  left  or  right,  to  go  forward  or  go  back,  is  equally  to 
find  offence  and  suffering.  "It  doesn't  matter  about  me  ; 
I  must  think  of  her/7  he  said  to  himself.  At  all  hazards 
he  must  not  forget  that  the  girl  at  his  side  was  little  more 
than  a  child.  He  could  neither  explain  to  her  why  he  was 
bound  in  honor  to  leave  her,  nor  must  he  leave  her  with 
any  haunting  memory  of  the  pain  this  going  cost  him. 
She  had  turned  obediently  when  he  suggested  the  side- 
street. 

i(  Oh,  I'm  certain  of  it" — she  brought  one  tight-clinched 
hand  with  a  quick  movement  to  her  breast — "  nobody  ever 
cared  like  this  before.  Just  look  at  their  faces." 

She  stopped  on  the  corner,  eying,  with  a  kind  of  imper 
sonal  disdain,  the  people  that  passed  up  the  church-steps. 

359 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  You  can  see  from  their  faces  they've  never  cared — like 
this/' 

"Come,"  said  Ethan,  nervously,  "they'll  wonder  why 
we  are  hanging  about/' 

"Most  people  are  only  half  alive,"  she  said,  walking  on ; 
"they  don't  feel,  they  don't  hear,  they  don't  see,  they 
don't  even  smell." 

Ethan  began  to  laugh  almost  hysterically. 

"  They  can't  turn  such  unexpected  corners,  anyhow,"  he 
said. 

His  laughter  seemed  a  little  to  clear  the  atmosphere. 

"You  don't  believe?"  she  inquired.  "No,  I  suppose 
people  wouldn't  believe.  But  I've  felt  quite  dizzy  with  joy 
at  smelling  hay  after  a  rain.  Heliotrope  makes  me  want  to 
laugh  and  sing.  Violets  make  me  feel  meek  and  wistful ; 
but  they  all  do  something  to  me.  You,  now,  simply  dis 
like  the  pungent  smell  of  marigolds.  I  feel  it  stick  into 
me  like  a  kind  of  goad.  But  I  oughtn't  to  tell  anybody." 
She  sighed. 

"  Why  not  ?" 

"  Even  you  laughed." 

"Forgive  me,  dear.'' 

For  the  "  dear  "  sake  she  smiled  up  at  him,  thrilling. 

"Oh,  I  forgive  you,  though  I  don't  much  like  the  idea 
of  having  told  you— even  that  much." 

"What  nonsense  !     You  must  tell  me  everything." 

"  Must  I  ?"  She  moved  closer  to  his  side.  "  Only  I 
should  like  you  to  have  a  good  opinion  of  me — and — well, 
to  care  so  much  about  smell,  I'm  afraid,  is  very  vulgar." 

"Oh,  I  don't  think  so." 

"  Novelists  do.  They  are  ready  to  tell  you  her  hearing 
was  'most  sensitive,'  and  all  about  his  '  eagle  eye,'  that  noth 
ing  escaped,  but  they  are  too  refined  to  say  nothing  escaped 
the  heroine's  nose.  Your  friends  the  poets,  too,  have  a 
very  low  opinion  of  smell.  Of  course,  if  I  could  always  re 
member  to  call  it  '  fragrance,'  it  would  be  better,  but  I 
don't  always  mean  fragrance." 

"  No,  no,"  he  laughed.  "  I  admit  that  smell  used  to  be 

800 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

the  poor  relation  of  the  senses,  and  was  kept  decently  in  the 
background ;  bat  over  in  France  nous  avons  change  tout  cela." 

"Oh,  well,  that's  all  right,  then." 

"  You  aren't  going  to  church  ?" 

"  Of  course  not." 

"  It's  so  ugly  here.  Shall  we  turn  back  and  go  up  on 
the  Hill  ?" 

"  No.  Yes."  (They  could  come  down  before  the  Pres 
byterian  Church  was  out.)  "  Let's  walk  very  fast." 

They  talked  little  on  the  way,  but  neither  of  them  noticed 
the  fact.  They  were  approaching  that  point  where  nur  das 
reine  Zusammensein  was  interchange  enough.  From  the 
Dug  Road  they  turned  into  the  ravine.  Ethan  caught  her 
by  the  hand,  and  they  scrambled  breathless  to  the  top. 

"Let's  rest  here,"  he  said. 

Yal  sat  down  under  the  elder-bush  that  grew  in  the  cleft 
of  the  Hill.  She  looked  up  at  him  smiling,  and  then  turned 
away  her  conscious  eyes.  Instead  of  sitting  down,  he  stood 
with  his  hands  in  his  pockets,  looking  at  her  with  a  sense 
of  vague  uneasiness  behind  the  tingling  in  his  blood. 

"  I  suppose  you  know  that  I  ought  to  have  taken  you 
home  after  your  flat  refusal  to  go  to  church  ?" 

"  You  aren't  my  master — yet." 

"Yes,  lam." 

The  blood  flew  to  her  face  obedient  to  the  call. 

"Yes,"  she  said,  slowly,  "you  are." 

He  turned  away,  cursing  his  traitor  tongue. 

"  I've  imposed  upon  you,"  he  said,  after  a  moment,  fling 
ing  himself  down  on  the  grass  a  little  distance  off — "im 
posed  upon  you  frightfully,  if  I've  made  you  believe  that. 
I'm  far  enough  from  being  even  master  of  myself." 

"Too  late  to  try  to  patch  it  up  now,"  she  said  ;  "the 
murder's  out." 

He  studied  her. 

"  I  suppose  you  think  you  know  me  ?" 

She  smiled  confidently. 

"You  don't.  I'm  compounded  of  all  the  things  that  are 
most  abhorrent  to  you." 

361 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION" 

Still  she  smiled.  The  unconscious  passion  in  the  young 
eyes  warmed  his  blood  like  wine.  He  moved  a  little  nearer 
to  her,  and  the  mere  movement  broke  the  spell.  The 
physical  obviousness  of  the  action  stung  him  into  self-criti 
cism,  self-contempt ;  and  then  as  he  turned  his  face  away 
from  his  cousin's  magnet  eyes,  he  fell  to  criticising  his  self- 
criticism.  Why  couldn't  he  take  things  simply,  naturally, 
as  Val  did  ?  Vain  ambition  !  He  must  submit  to  seeing, 
always  and  always,  the  skeleton  under  the  fair  flesh,  the 
end  from  the  beginning. 

"You  are  mistaken  about  me,"  he  said.  "I  look  out 
upon  a  world  eternally  different  from  the  world  you  see/" 

"What's  it  like?" 

"  I  hope  you'll  never  quite  realize." 

"  Oh,  I  shall  ;  but  I  sha'n't  mind." 

"  1  might  be  doing  you  the  best  service  in  my  power  if  I 
gave  you  a  notion  of  how  much  you'd  mind." 

"  I  give  you  leave." 

lie  looked  into  the  tender,  happy  eyes,  and,  "  I  haven't 
the  heart,"  he  said.  "  After  all,  it  may  not  be  necessary 
for  you  to  lower  your  opinion  of  the  world.  It  will,  per 
haps,  do  if  you  merely  modify  your  opinion  of  me." 

"  Don't  you  see  I  can't  do  that  ?" 

"Oh  yes,  you  can."  He  pulled  himself  together  and 
sat  up.  "  You're  at  bottom  such  a  rational  creature. 
You've  only  to  realize  I'm  a  dreadful  fraud.  I've  talked 
about — you'd  be  sure  to  find  me  out  some  time,  so  I  may 
as  well  make  a  clean  breast  of  it— 

"  It  isn't  anything  you've  ever  said,  that  I  depend 
upon." 

"Oh,  really!" 

He  threw  back  his  head  and  laughed. 

"  It's  partly  just  the  look  of  you,  but  it's  most  of  all  just 
— just  that  I'm  certain  no  one  in  the  world  is  so  kind  and 
brave—" 

"  I  brave  !     You  poor  child  !" 

"  Yes,  and  kind,  deep  down  to  the  core,"  she  said,  with 
beaming  eyes.  "I  know  it  by  your  voice,  and  by  the  way 

" 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

you  feel  everybody  else's  feeling.  That's  something  like 
me  :  I  feel,  too,  but  it  doesn't  make  me  kind." 

"Neither  does  it  me.  I'm  a  mass  of  deception.  I  put 
on  a  solemn  look,  and  you  think  I'm  sympathizing.  Fm 
not  :  I'm  actively  engaged  in  despising  the  universe." 

"That's  because  your  standards  are  so  high." 

He  laughed  out  an  ironic  "Exactly !" 

"You  make  other  people  seem  about  so  high."  She  held 
an  out-stretched  hand  a  few  inches  above  the  grass,  dropped 
it,  and,  leaning  forward  upon  it,  said,  with  a  quick-drawn 
breath  :  "  It's  been  so  exciting  for  us  all  here,  knowing 
you.  It's  been  like  knowing  Robert  Bruce  or  Richard 
Coeur  de  Lion — '' 

"Oh,  very  like  Richard  Coeur  de  Lion  especially." 

"Just  what  /  say,  particularly  when  you  put  on  that 
black  look  and  your  eyes  burn.  I  know  then  you'd  have 
the  courage  for  any  thing  /" 

The  whimsical  amusement  died  out  of  his  face. 

"  I  told  you  I'd  taken  you  in.     I'm  a  mortal  coward  !" 

"  You?" 

He  nodded,  looking  off  down  the  ravine. 

"  I'm  afraid  of  death.     I'm  even  more  afraid  of  life." 

They  were  only  obscure  phrases  in  her  ears. 

"I  know  you're  afraid  of  the  dark,"  she  said,  smiling 
gently,  "but  only  when  Fm  not  there.  You  see — I  must 
be  there." 

"  Poor  little  cousin  !  Lucky  for  you  that  Fate  and  your 
father  have  settled  that  you  can't  be  '  there." 

"  I  settle  things  for  myself,"  she  said,  hotly  ;  "  and  don't 
call  me  little  cousin." 

"Why  not?" 

"  It  seems  to  cut  me  down  to  childhood.  Besides" — she 
stood  up — "I'm  really  very  tall,  and  I've  heard  enough 
about  being  a  cousin." 

"  You  hardened  optimist  !"  He  lay  on  his  back  with  his 
hands  clasped  behind  his  head,  and  looked  up  at  the  tall, 
slight  figure  of  the  girl.  "You're  actually  ready  to  pit 
yourself  against  the  laws  of  the  universe,  and  expect  not  to 

363 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

suffer  for  it.  Do  you  know  that  your  invincible  belief  that 
you,  at  least,  were  meant  to  be  happy,  is  the  most  pathetic 
thing  I've  found  in  the  world  ?" 

"  I'm  not  in  the  very  least  pathetic,"  she  said,  with  deep 
indignation. 

"  Shouldn't  wonder  if  it  would  be  always  like  that  with 
you/'  he  went  on,  unmoved.  "Stark  inability  to  compre 
hend  personal  misfortune  !  Huin  will  rattle  about  your 
ears — you'll  believe  blindly  it's  somehow  for  the  best.  How 
like  life's  diabolical  ingenuity  that  just  the  man  I  am 
should  have  come  across  just  the  girl  you  are  !" 

"Thank  you,  most  particularly.  Life  and  I  are  both 
obliged." 

"  Of  course,  you've  read  that  last  will  and  testament — 
the  one  your  father  wrote — 

"No  ;  haven't  asked  for  it.  Grandma  hasn't  mentioned 
it." 

"  Ah  !     She  probably  would  if  she  knew— 

"  You  may  be  sure,"  Val  interrupted,  "  my  father 
doesn't  think  those  hideous  black  thoughts  now." 

"  Ah,  yes,  I'm  sure  enough  of  that." 

"  You  are?" 

"  Oh  yes — he's  done  with  all  that  now." 

"  Then  why  on  earth  should  we  go  on — " 

"  We're  not  dead,  my  dear." 

"  You  don't  mean—" 

She  looked  at  him  with  horror-filled  eyes. 

"  What's  the  matter  ?'•' 

"  You—  "  But  she  couldn't  bring  the  awful  doubt  to  birth. 
That  any  one  in  her  own  range  of  experience  should  be 
heard  to  hint  that  the  dead  were  done  with  thinking  !  Not 
that  a  mythical  person  in  a  book,  but  some  one  she  knew, 
should  be  found  saying  calmly  that  he  had  abandoned  hope 
of  the  life  to  come  !  "  My  father,"  she  whispered,  corning 
a  trace  nearer,  "did  he  ever  say  he  didn't  believe  in  im 
mortality  ?  No  !  no  !  he  couldn't.  But  did  he  ever  tell 
you  he  wasn't  sure  9" 

"  How  can  any  one  be  sure  ?" 

364 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  How  can  you  bear  to  live  if  you're  not  sure  ?"  she 
cried. 

He  stared  at  her  in  astonishment,  forgetting  Mrs.  Gano's 
saying,  "  The  one  Christian  tenet  I  am  satisfied  Val  holds 
is  the  doctrine  of  the  Resurrection." 

"I  thought  you  said,  your  father  talked  quite  freely  to 
you." 

The  girl  grasped  the  slender  branches  of  the  elder-bush. 

"  Then  there  are  people,  and  I  know  them,  who  don't 
believe  in  immortality." 

The  world  seemed  to  swim.  As  she  lifted  up  her  dazed 
eyes,  she  saw  a  green-clad  figure  lingering  disconsolately 
along  the  brow  of  the  hill.  Another  instant  Julia  and  she 
had  recognized  each  other. 

"  Not  to  believe  in  immortality  !"  she  repeated,  as 
though  she  had  never  heard  of  the  idea  before.  "  Then, 
for  such  people  it's  all  this  life — this  life.  They  can't 
afford  to  miss  anything  here  ;  it's  their  only  chance.  Do 
you  hear,  cousin  Ethan  ?  This  life — this  life  may  be  all." 

On  an  uncontrollable  impulse  he  seized  her  hand  to  draw 
her  down  beside  him. 

"  Julia's  coming,"  said  Val,  hurriedly,  and  advanced  to 
meet  her  friend. 

"Oh,  here  you  are!"  called  out  the  new-comer.  "I 
didn't  get  to  church,  after  all.  And  I've  a  message  from 
my  father,"  she  said  to  Ethan,  as  he  came  forward.  "  He 
wants  you  to  come  to  supper  to-night  to  meet  Senator 
Green." 

When  Val  and  Ethan  got  home  late  for  dinner,  they 
were  met  in  the  hall  by  Mrs.  Gano. 

"Lo !  she  comes,  'with  high  looks  like  the  King  of  As 
syria,"'  Ethan  quoted. 

Mrs.  Gano  levelled  an  unmistakably  cold  stare  at  the  CTil- 
prits. 

"Emmeline  tells  me  you  were  not  in  church." 

"'No;  we  were  late,"  said  Ethan.  When  Val  had  run 
up-stairs  to  take  off  her  things  :  "You  must  forgive  me 

865 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

this  once,"  he  added,  speaking  low,  for  I'm  going  away  to- 
morrow/' 

He  had  no  word  alone  with  his  cousin  till  the  next  morn 
ing.  Nothing  further  had  been  said  about  his  going,  but 
his  trunk  was  packed  and  the  carriage  ordered.  He  found 
V7al  sitting  alone  in  the  parlor,  in  a  corner  of  the  sofa  by 
the  window. 

"  What  are  you  doing  here  ?"  he  said,  shutting  the  door. 

"  Just  thinking." 

"Don't  do  that,  such  a  bad  habit." 

"  Oh,  I'm  just  trying  to*  get  accustomed  to  realizing 
there  are  people  who  believe  " — she  spread  out  her  hands 
and  let  them  fall  — "  this  is  all." 

'•  Don't  bother  about  such  people,"  he  said,  sitting  down. 

Vul,  usually  so  ready  of  tongue,  was  seized  upon  by  silence. 
Ethan,  too,  sat  speechless,  struggling  with  the  sense  of 
keen-edged  wretchedness  that  pressed  knife-like  on  his 
heart.  How  was  he  to  say  good  -  bye  ?  and — with  a  long 
look  down  the  road — how  was  he  to  live  afterwards  ?  She 
— oh,  she  would  console  herself  ;  she  was  very  young.  But 
for  him  .  .  .  the  immense  dead  weight  of  life  pressed  intoler 
ably  hard.  The  futility  of  it  extinguished  the  very  sun. 
Presently,  as  they  sat  there  so  silent,  Val  bowed  her  head, 
hiding  her  face  in  her  hands.  It  shot  through  him  that 
some  realization  had  come  to  her  of  the  unseen  forces  that 
make  of  us  their  sport — some  vision  of  the  bitter  absurdity 
of  the  pigmy  human  lot  we  make  such  a  pother  about. 

The  sense  of  a  vision  shared,  of  a  common  pain,  merged 
swiftly  into  physical  yearning.  The  physical  yearning 
cried  aloud  for  assurance  that  it,  too,  was  "  common."  He 
looked  down  upon  the  bowed  head  and  the  little  white 
nape  of  her  neck.  He  noticed  how  out  of  the  upturned 
swaths  of  firm-bound  hair  the  wild  love-locks  were  falling 
—locks  so  fine  that  they  looked  like  faint  wavy  shadows 
falling  over  the  ears. 

Had  she  any  faintest  notion  of  the  hunger  in  him  that 
would  not  let  him  sleep  ?  As  he  bent  over  her  the  white 

366 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

neck  was  suffused  with  rose.  Ah,  she  knew  !  The  traitor 
blood  had  signalled  him  behind  her  back. 

"  Kiss  me,  dear/'  he  whispered.  Had  she  heard  ?  The 
little  ears  glowed  scarlet.  "  Dear —  He  slipped  his  hand 
under  her  chin,  and  turned  her  face  to  him.  The  curtain 
ing  lids  still  hid  her  eyes,  but  the  lashes  quivered,  and  that 
odd  little  pulse  in  her  upper  lip,  that  was  beating,  too, 
"  piteously,"  he  said  to  himself.  "  Look  at  me,  dear. 
Val,  open  your  eyes,  I  say." 

She  did. 

It  was  like  a  shaft  of  sunshine  ;  the  rapture  of  the  look 
startled  him.  He  would  have  been  prepared  for  tears,  but 
this  cloudless  joy — 

Ah,  she  was  very  young  ! 

"Kiss  me,  child." 

He  did  not  bend  towards  her.  She  should  come  to  him 
for  this  last  greeting  that  was  the  first  as  well. 

The  radiant  face,  flushing,  paling,  came  closer.  He  felt 
the  breath  from  out  her  parted  lips. 

But  the  sweetness  of  her  nearness  could  not  for  him  wipe 
out  the  fact  that  before  them  lay  parting  and  long  heart 
ache. 

"  Good-bye,"  he  said,  brokenly. 

She  drew  back  before  the  kiss  was  more  than  inhaled. 

ts  Good-bye  !"  she  echoed.  "No  ;  I  will  never  kiss  you 
'  good-bye. "'  She  freed  herself  from  his  prisoning  arms. 
"  Never,  never,  never  V  She  sprang  up.  "  To  get  that 
kiss  from  me  you  must  be  lying  dead." 

And  she  fled  out  of  the  room. 

A  little  later  he  made  his  farewells  to  the  assembled 
household  in  the  hall.  Having  kissed  Emmie,  he  turned 
to  Val. 

She  grasped  his  hand  as  she  averted  her  white  face, 
whispering  : 

"'I  will  kiss  you  when  you  come  again." 


CHAPTER   XXV 

AFTER  Ethan  had  gone,  life  seemed  to  stand  still  for  a 
Ion?,  long  time.  The  only  real  events  were  his  letters,  not 
to  Val,  although  she  had  written  him  the  very  night  after 
lie  went  away.  His  letters  were  all  addressed  to  her  grand 
mother,  and  yet  every  syllable  seemed  to  the  girFs  mind  to 
be  meant  for  herself — to  be  charged  with  subtle  meaning, 
intelligible  to  no  one  else. 

At  Christmas  he  wrote  the  two  girls  a  single  perfunctory 
page  of  cousinly  greeting  that  arrived  with  his  presents,  a 
couple  of  Russian  silver  belts.  But  this  letter  was  addressed 
to  Val,  and  she  would  not  open  it  till  she  was  alone.  In 
side  was  an  enclosure  in  a  separate  envelope  : 

"  DEAR  COUSIN  VAL, — Forgive  me  for  not  answering  your  letter.  It 
would  be  nice  of  you  to  send  me  a  line,  now  and  then,  to  tell  me  how 
things  go  on  at  the  Fort,  and  whether  I  can  do  anything  for  anybody 
there.  I  enclose  cheque. 

"  Your  affectionate  cousin,  ETHAN  GANO." 

"  *  Cousin  !'  '  cousin  !'  forever  ''cousin  I9"  ejaculated  the 
girl ;  and  she  answered  him  the  same  day  : 

"DEAR  ETHAN,— Thank  you  for  the  beautiful  belt,  but  I  do  not 
forgive  you  for  not  answering  my  letter.  Still,  I  will  do  anything  in 
reason  that  you  ask  me  if  you  don't  ever  call  me  cousin  again." 

And  then  followed  an  account  of  her  surreptitious  house 
hold  expenditures.  He  answered  early  in  the  New  Year: 

"  DEAR  VAL, — I  obey  your  mandate,  and  will  not  hereafter  own 
you  for  a  cousin.  I  believe  that  by  strenuous  wishing  you  could  al 
most  think  yourself  out  of  the  relationship." 

"  I  am  very  sure  I  could  "  [she  wrote  back]  "  if  you  would  let  me." 

868 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

That  letter,  and  several  to  follow,  elicited  nothing.  She 
ate  her  heart  out  with  humiliation  and  with  longing,  and 
then  salved  the  hurt  with  dreams.  Her  best  times  were 
when  she  was  quite  alone,  in  the  dark  of  the  night  or  early 
in  the  morning.  Kegularly  as  she  rose  up,  or  lay  down  to 
sleep,  she  kissed  the  face  of  the  little  watch  he  had  given 
her.  Sometimes,  under  the  spell  of  an  old  and  long- 
abandoned  habit,  she  would  slip  to  her  knees  by  the  bed 
side.  But  instead  of  any  prayer,  old  or  new,  she  would 
fling  wide  her  arms,  crying  under  her  breath  :  "  How  long, 
0  Lord — how  long  ?"  Never  in  her  blackest  hour  did  she 
believe  there  was  worse  in  store  for  her  than  waiting. 

In  a  quiet  way  people  came  and  went  at  the  Fort  more 
than  ever  before.  Julia  and  Jerry,  when  he  was  home  for 
the  vacations,  Ernest  Halliwell,  and  Harry  Wilbur  in  par 
ticular,  after  he  had  thrown  up  the  fine  position  in  Boston 
that  Ethan  had  put  in  his  way — they,  and  others,  trooped 
in  and  out,  carrying  Val  off  riding,  sleighing,  dancing, 
boating.  Harry  Wilbur  proposed  to  her  on  an  average  of 
six  times  a  year,  and  took  her  smiling  and  affectionate  re 
fusal  for  mere  postponement.  It  was  to  A7al  a  life  of  wait 
ing,  but  not  of  inaction. 

Mrs.  Gano,  growing  feebler  and  feebler,  had  allowed  her 
eldest  grand  -  daughter  (as  a  special  mark  of  favor,  be  it 
understood,  and  merely  to  "teach  her  how")  to  take  the 
reins  of  household  management.  Yet  from  the  royal  ele 
vation  of  the  great  four-poster,  where  she  now  spent  most 
of  her  time,  did  Mrs.  Gano  rule  the  house  as  absolutely  as 
before.  Val,  however,  was  not  content  to  do  merely  the 
necessary,  the  expected.  To  Mrs.  Gano's  quiet  satisfac 
tion,  the  girl  developed  a  passion  for  careful  household 
government.  Not  only  were  none  of  Mrs.  Gano's  directions 
slighted  with  Val  at  the  helm,  but  she  bettered  her  instruc 
tions,  discreetly  not  taking  credit.  Privately  she  kept  ex 
pense  books,  learned  cooking — yes,  arid  laughed  to  think  of 
her  old  detestation  of  it.  With  Venic's  help  she  made 
cretonne  covers  for  the  furniture,  and  seemed  to  renew  all 
things  by  the  magic  of  her  industrious  hands,  for  most  of 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION" 

Ethan's  money  had  to  lie  at  the  bank  out  of  very  fear.  She 
brought  down  old  lamps  and  ancient  household  gods  from 
the  attic  and  made  "  effects  "  with  them.  She  did  not  care 
about  gardening,  any  more  than  she  cared  about  cooking, 
but  she  hated  the  neglected,  weed-grown  borders  under  the 
windows.  So  she  cleared  and  made  them  blossom  again, 
filled  the  house  with  flowers,  and  thought  a  thousand  times  : 
"  If  he  comes  to-day  he  will  find  it  beautiful." 

It  would  not  be  true  to  suppose  that  this  quest  for  beauty 
in  such  a  barren  field  was  satisfying.  It  filled  in  the  time. 
It  was  part  of  the  endless  satisfaction  of  life  that  the  world 
was  full  of  so  many  things  to  do  "by  the  way."  She  had 
her  days  of  fierce  anger  at  the  delays,  the  vagueness  of  the 
future,  the  fear  of  the  new  interests  that  must  be  filling 
Ethan's  life. 

After  nearly  a  year  had  gone  by,  he  answered  one  of  her 
letters.  She  acknowledged  the  civility  in  such  caustic 
fashion  that  he  was  piqued  to  reply  by  return  of  post. 
And  so  started  on  its  uneven  course  that  interchange  of 
letters  that  was  soon  the  greatest  joy  of  her  existence  and 
the  permanent  stuff  of  her  dreams.  It  gave  her  a  feeling 
of  having  a  fresh  hold  on  him.  She  knew  where  he  was 
now,  and  something  of  what  he  thought  and  did.  Her 
own  days  were  lived  twice  over,  that  he  might  share  them, 
only  the  time  she  re-lived  on  paper  was  more  vivid,  more 
significant  than  the  actual  hours  as  they  sped.  Life  took 
on  such  an  edge  in  the  process  of  being  presented  to  Ethan 
that  the  girl  wondered  sometimes  to  find  she  enjoyed 
telling  about  the  dance  or  picnic  a  thousand-fold  more 
keenly  than  she  had  cared  about  the  thing  itself.  At 
first  she  wrote  flippantly,  touching  chiefly  on  the  humors 
of  the  New  Plymouth  life;  and  when  he  took  to  sending 
her  books,  she  bade  him  keep  all  the  improving  ones  to 
himself.  A  certain  English  novel  very  much  in  vogue  she 
promptly  returned. 

"If  I  want  to  read  political  economy,  I've  got  my 
father's  books.  I  like  a  story  to  be  about  love,  and  to 
end  happily.  If  you  think  of  sending  me  another  novel, 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

remember  /  like  plenty  of  orange-blossoms,  not  little  l)it§  of 
brain."  But  oddly  enough,  sho  had  no  rooted  objection 
to  reading  aloud  to  her  grandmother  any  non-religious 
book,  however  serious.  Val  found  that  many  of  these 
dignified  tomes  were  not  as  dull  as  you  might  think  ;  but 
for  long  she  laid  the  credit  to  Mrs.  Gano's  door.  It.was 
an  old  story  that  that  lady  had  a  way  of  making  things 
seem  interesting.  Val  was  always  privately  grateful,  even 
touched,  at  being  let  off  from  the  religious  readings.  Once 
when  Mrs.  Gano  was  recovering  from  an  illness,  Val,  sit 
ting  at  the  bedside,  was  visited  by  a  fresh  sense  of  her 
growing  comradeship,  even  her  growing  dependence  upon 
that  alert  and  sympathetic  mind.  In  a  softened  mood 
she  fell  to  thinking  how  ready  her  grandmother  had  always 
been  to  put  the  worked  book-marks  in  her  Church  histories 
and  doctrinal  treatises,  and  listen  to  Val  read  biography 
and  travel  aloud,  all  the  while  letting  the  girl  feel  that 
she  was  not  only  adding  to  the  "common  stock  of  harm 
less  pleasure,"  but  was  sparing  the  older  eyes. 

"  You  are  very  good  to  me/'  Val  said,  leaning  her  head 
against  the  " painted  calico"  coverlid.  It  made  her  happy 
to  feel  the  long,  thin  hand  upon  her  hair.  She  had  never 
got  over  the  old  childish  sense  of  its  being  a  proud  thing 
to  receive  a  ma'rk  of  favor  at  those  hands. 

"  Shall  we  read  ?"  said  the  girl,  presently. 

"If  you  like." 

In  a  flush  of  generous  feeling,  she  reached  out  and 
took  up  Literature  and  Dogma  from  the  table  at  the  bed 
side. 

"  What's  that  ?"  asked  Mrs.  Gano,  narrowing  her  eyes. 

Val  told  her. 

"Ol\  no" — she  sat  up  and  looked  round — "I  sent  to 
the  library  after  Chevalier  Bunsen  for  you  and  me." 

"  Let  me  read  you  this.  You  mustn't  always  think  about 
what  I  like." 

"Nonsense,  child;  Arnold's  book  would  bore  you,  and 
you'd  read  it  so  it  wrould  bore  me.  Find  Bunsen." 

"You  let  Emmie  read  you  this." 

871 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"Emmeline's  different.  Find  Bunsen.  You'll  like 
Bunsen." 

"  Why  do  you  suppose  I  have  such  a  rage  for  biogra 
phies  ?"  Val  demanded,  a  shade  anxiously. 

'•'Partly  because  you're  young." 

".Emmie's  younger  still." 

Mrs.  Gano  smiled  and  shook  her  head  enigmatically. 

"  Young,  and  more  interested  in  people,  as  yet,  than  in 
ideas." 

"  That  has  a  very  poor  sound — like  the  personal  column 
of  a  newspaper." 

"  Oh,  it's  natural  enough.  The  walls  of  your  own  room 
tell  the  same  story — all  faces." 

"Yes,  but  to  hang  up  in  your  bedroom,  what  else  is  there?" 

Mrs.  Gano  smiled,  and  then  half  whimsically  : 

"I  don't  say  there's  any  special  advantage  in  it,  but  Fve 
always  had  a  liking  for  the  'flower  pieces'  we  painted  in 
our  youth,  and  for  landscapes  and  marine  views." 

"  Oh,  those- 

"  Exactly!"  and  the  older  woman  laughed  outright. 

"  Well,  I'm  sure,"  said  Val,  eager  to  defend  herself, 
"cousin  Ethan  says  that  to  the  American,  to  the  unjaded 
mind  the  wide  world  over,  it  is  the  'life'  in  any  picture  or 
description  that  interests  and  fixes  itself  in  the  memory. 
A  vast  amount  is  said  and  written  about  St.  Mark's  in 
Venice.  But  in  how  many  minds  does  it  stand  a  beautiful 
and  stately  background  for  flights  of  pigeons  to  wheel  and 
circle  against,  or  to  settle  down  before,  on  friendly  terms 
with  the  populace  ?  Not  the  glories  of  architecture,  but 
the  brief  and  gentle  life  of  doves,  makes  the  picture  vital 
in  the  mind." 

"Ah,  and  when  did  Ethan  say  all  that  ?" 

"  When — while  you  were  ill  I  had  a  letter  from  him." 

"Oh,  indeed!"  She  turned  with  an  indescribable  look 
and  settled  down  among  the  pillows. 

"  Shall  I  get  the  letter  and  read  it  to  you  ?"  said  Val,  to 
her  own  surprise  and  most  unwillingly,  but  acting  under  a 
sense  of  strong  coercion. 

372 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

(( As  you  please,"  said  the  wily  old  woman.  "Have  a 
look  for  Bunsen,  too." 

Val  absented  herself  long  enough,  looking  for  Bunsen, 
to  adapt  Ethan's  letter  for  a  grandmother's  ears.  It  had 
been  no  love-letter  even  in  its  original  form,  but  it  uncon 
sciously  paved  the  way  for  one  and  more  to  follow.  Val 
wrote  to  her  cousin  that  night  : 

"I  have  usually  read  your  letters  to  the  family,  and  think  it  would 
be  better  to  go  on  doing-  so.  It's  not  that  my  grandmother  tries  to 
make  me.  When  I  oiler  to,  she  says,  'As  you  please,  my  dear,' 
but  I  have  a  horrid,  uncomfortable  feeling  if  I  don't.  She  seems  to 
be  looking  through  me  into  the  back  of  my  spine,  to  see  why  1  want 
to  keep  the  letter  to  myself.  It's  funny,  but  when  I  don't  show  it 
to  her  she  makes  me  think  she  has  divined  not  only  all  there  was 
in  it  that  I  didn't  want  to  show  her,  but  a  great  deal  more.  It's  that 
I  resent  most.  So,  if  you  want  to  say  something  you  don't  want 
her  to  see  (about  the  money,  you  know,  and  things  like  that),  just 
put  a  tiny  check  opposite  the  stamp-corner,  and  I'll  know  there's  an 
enclosure  meant  only  for  me." 

It  was  these  "  enclosures  "  that  worked  the  mischief. 
They  were  a  standing  invitation  to  say  things  too  intimate 
for  other  eyes.  Brief  and  discreet  at  first,  and  dealing 
with  figures,  they  expanded  as  time  went  on,  till  they  had 
to  be  written  finely  on  foreign  note,  that  the  discrepancy 
between  the  letter's  bulk  when  brought  to  the  front  door, 
and  the  letter  as  it  appeared  in  the  family  circle  up-stairs, 
should  not  challenge  attention.  Mrs.  Gano's  confinement 
to  her  room  made  the  matter  easy.  Only  the  blind  and 
unobservant  Emmie  ever  saw  the  letter  when  it  came.  If 
it  bore  the  significant  check,  it  was  opened  alone  ;  if  not, 
the  seal  was  ostentatiously  broken  under  the  vigilant  eye. 
It  was  sure  to  be  an  exciting  hour.  Great  preparations 
preceded  :  a  propping  up  of  pillows,  and  mending  of  the 
fire,  if  it  were  winter,  that  the  reading  and  inevitable  dis 
cussion  might  be  uninterrupted  ;  a  proper  arrangement  of 
light  and  general  careful  ''setting  of  the  scene."  Emmie, 
with  soft  eyes  shining,  sitting  demurely  by  in  the  little 
green  chair  that  had  been  hers — her  father's,  too,  when  a 
child — and  Val  close  to  the  bedside,  reading  with  beating 

373 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

heart  and  a  careful  emphasis  (for  she  was  scolded  else)  the 
accounts  of  Ethan's  varied  life — accounts  punctuated  by 
comment,  laughter,  and  sometimes  by  scathing  disapproval. 

"I'd  tell  him,  if  I  were  you/'  Mrs.  Gano  would  say,  sit 
ting  up  with  sudden  vigor;  and  the  opinion  she  would  ex 
press  seemed  frequently  too  provocative  and  "pat"  to  be 
dispensed  with.  Val  would  unblushingly  annex  it,  and 
reap  her  reward  in  Ethan's  spirited  rejoinder,  which  in 
turn  never  failed  to  "draw''  Mrs.  Gano.  That  lady  was, 
perhaps,  not  a  little  diverted  at  playing  a  part  in  the  game ; 
conscious,  too,  beyond  a  doubt,  that  with  a  girl  like  Val 
to  deal  with  it  was  probably  a  question  of  accepting  the 
correspondence  and  sharing  in  its  entertainment,  or  know 
ing  that  it  went  on  without  her  having  power  to  direct  or 
color  it.  It  was  so  the  correspondence  (all  save  the  "en 
closures")  came  to  be  family  property,  for  Val  would  bring 
in  her  reply,  that  she  might  be  approved  for  her  line  of 
argument,  and  that  she  might  hear  the  keen  enjoyment  of 
that  laugh  which,  unconsciously,  she  "  played  for  "  as  much 
as  any  comedian  ever  did. 

"I  corresponded  with  several  gentlemen  when  1  was 
young,"  Mrs.  Gano  once  said.  "  I  hear  the  fashion  is  going 
out.  It  is  a  pity.  A  good  letter  is  too  good  a  thing  for 
the  world  to  lose." 

Val  burned  with  a  wild  desire  to  show  the  "  enclosures." 
for  they  were  the  best  of  all.  Her  grandmother  would 
rage,  but  she  couldn't  help  appreciating  them,  the  girl  said 
to  herself,  with  a  mixture  of  terror  at  the  thought,  and  of 
longing  to  make  the  confidence.  It  had  come  to  be  such 
a  habit  to  share  things,  to  "try  "them  against  the  steel  of 
that  wit  and  judgment,  that  she  was  conscious  of  an  in 
completeness  of  enjoyment  in  keeping  any  specially  good 
thing  to  herself.  If  it  were  a  book— "  No,"  she  would  say, 
"I'll  save  this  for  our  evenings";  and  even  if  in  a  dull  or 
mediocre  page  some  one  phrase  or  happy  word  shone  out, 
she  would  fly  tip-stairs,  and  at  the  foot  of  that  four-posted 
throne  lay  down  the  treasure  -  trove,  getting  in  return  a 
filler  zest  and  a  truer  value. 

374 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

If,  as  the  time  went  on,  Ethan  had  hours  of  feeling  that 
his  continued  absence  from  the  Fort  was  a  piece  of  fan 
tastic  self-sacrifice  which  he  would  end  by  boarding  the 
next  train,  Mrs.  Gano  no  less  was  minded,  more  than  once, 
to  yield  to  her  hunger  for  a  sight  of  him.  The  thought  of 
the  little  boy  Ethan  who  had  begged  that  the  Port  might 
be  his  home,  even  more  than  the  thought  of  the  man, 
tugged  at  her  heart-strings.  Would  she  die  before  seeing 
her  only  grandson  again  ?  If  in  one  of  these  moments 
Ethan  had  himself  suggested  coming,  she  would  have  wel 
comed  him  with  open  arms.  Meanwhile  she  waited  for 
the  news  that  must  be  on  the  way — the  news  of  his  mar 
riage. 

Even  in  ''enclosures"  to  her  cousin,  Val's  only  reference 
to  that  "barrier,"  which  she  would  not  admit,  was  charac 
teristically  by  way  of  a  gibe. 

"We  were  talking  the  other  day  at  the  Otways"'  [she  wrote] 
"about  its  being  rather  funny  to  think  my  grandmother  was  my 
great-aunt  and  my  father  was  my  cousin— my  mother,  too,  and  my 
sister  as  well,  all  cousins.  Emmie  and  I  gathered  that,  according  to 
the  popular  superstition,  we  ought  by  rights  to  have  very  few  wits, 
or  only  one  arm  or  a  piece  of  a  leg.  Emmie  and  I  assured  each  other 
on  the  way  home  that  no  reflection  can  be  cast  upon  our  arms  and  legs, 
but  we  agreed  that  we  must  take  great  care  that  we  are  not  idiots  ;  so 
you  may,  after  all,  send  me  a  few  improving  books." 

It  was  at  the  end  of  a  brief  visit  to  Cincinnati  that 
Ethan's  strongest  temptation  assailed  him.  It  came  in  the 
commonplace  form  of  a  photograph  in  a  forwarded  letter 
from  Val.  Partly  the  picture,  but,  even  more,  something 
of  the  girl's  eager  spirit  that  had  got  between  the  lines  of 
the  letter,  something  unsaid,  yet  eloquent,  of  her  unex 
pected  power  of  holding  out,  took  sudden  hold  on  him, 
made  his  nerves  tingle  as  if  by  a  bodily  contact.  There 
she  was,  vivid  as  she  had  been  for  so  many  yesterdays,  to 
day  triumphant,  irresistible.  He  must  go — he  must  go  to 
her  !  He  had  been  attempting  more  than  he  had  strength 
to  carry  through.  He  flung  some  things  into  a  valise  and 
went  down  to  the  station.  Train  just  gone — another  in  an 

375 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

hour  and  ten  minutes.  He  got  his  ticket  and  bought  pa 
pers  and  magazines.  In  the  Enquirer  the  report  of  an  ad 
dress  before  the  Medical  Congress  caught  his  eye.  The 
famous  Dr.  Gage  had  been  haranguing  his  colleagues  upon 
the  supposed  deterioration  of  the  American  race,  because 
the  birth-rate  among  the  well-to-do  classes  was  lamentably 
low,  the  reason  being  that  more  and  more  the  women  of 
these  classes  shrank  from  motherhood.  In  the  course  of 
his  address  Dr.  Gage  made  a  passing  reference  to  his  forth 
coming  work  on  Consanguineous  Marriage. 

In  the  next  column,  among  the  hotel  arrivals,  it  ap 
peared  that  the  great  doctor  was  registered  at  the  Burnet 
House.  Ethan  took  out  his  watch.  "Why  not  ?  There's 
time."  He  jumped  into  the  nearest  carriage  and  drove  to 
the  hotel. 

In  something  over  an  hour  he  returned,  gave  up  his  New 
Plymouth  ticket,  and  got  one  for  the  afternoon  express  to 
New  York.  Nobody  at  the  Fort  ever  knew  how  near  Ethan 
had  been  to  taking  them  by  surprise. 

The  Otways  always  went  away  in  the  hot  weather.  The 
summer  that  Val  was  twenty -two,  Julia  and  her  family 
went  to  the  Jersey  coast  for  their  holiday.  There,  at 
Long  Branch,  they  found  Ethan.  Both  he  and  Julia 
mentioned  the  fact  in  their  letters,  and  Val  tried  to  think 
the  meetings  as  casual  and  unimportant  as  they  looked  on 
paper  ;  but  it  was  the  hardest  summer  she  had  known. 

Besides  the  fact  that  Julia  was  enjoying  opportunities  of 
seeing  Ethan  denied  to  Val,  there  was  matter  in  her  letters 
even  more  disturbing — references  to  Mr.  Gano's  constant 
appearance  in  the  train  of  a  young  and  wealthy  widow  who 
had  a  house  at  Long  Branch.  This  lady,  Julia  wrote,  was 
known  to  have  been  one  of  a  party  Mr.  Gano  had  taken 
yachting  before  coming  to  Long  Branch.  Val  had  heard 
about  that  party  from  her  cousin,  but  no  mention  of  Mrs. 
Suydam.  The  lady  was  much  in  Val's  thoughts.  At  last, 
upon  an  exasperated  reference  in  one  of  Julia's  letters  to 
Mr.  Gano's  "  Circe,"  Val  wrote  to  him:  ''Tell  me  some- 

376 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

thing  about  this  Mrs.  Suydam,  whom  yon  have  never  once 
mentioned,  although  you  see  so  much  of  her/' 

Ethan  answered  with  a  brief  biographical  sketch  of  the 
lady,  carefully  edited  ;  for,  in  truth,  Adelaide  Suydam  had 
led  an  eventful  existence,  albeit  keeping  her  hold  on  society 
by  virtue  of  her  money  and  her  good  old  Knickerbocker 
origin.  Of  other  virtue  she  was  held  to  have  no  embar 
rassing  amount.  But  she  was  a  highly  accomplished  person, 
handsome,  daring,  and  obviously  determined  to  make  life 
interesting  to  Ethan  Gano. 

Her  added  and  special  attraction  for  him  lay  in  his  dis 
covery  that  she  had  no  design  to  marry  him  ;  but  he  was 
presently  made  aware  that  she  meant  none  the  less  to  ab 
sorb  him.  A  little  puzzled,  and  a  good  deal  intrigued  by 
her,  he  returned  from  the  yachting  trip  very  much  under 
her  spell.  She  had  skilfully  arranged  the  Long  Branch 
episode  for  the  crowning  victory. 

It  may  have  been  the  mere  act  of  writing  about  her, 
however  discreetly  —  seeing  her  perforce  through  Val's 
eyes  for  a  moment — that  brought  about  the  recoil.  The 
very  discretion  he  found  himself  obliged  to  employ  con 
victed  him,  and  opened  wide  a  window  on  the  future.  A 
glimpse  of  Val  through  it — however  distant,  unattainable — 
brought  the  prospect  into  truer  perspective  for  him.  He 
saw  less  of  the  Suydam,  and  went  to  the  Otways  to  hear 
about  Val. 

"Circe"  herself,  not  understanding  the  situation,  and 
being  far  too  adroit  to  underline  her  temporary  defeat  by 
putting  questions,  believed  the  handsome  Julia  Otway  was 
the  distracting  influence.  She  arranged  an  exodus  to 
Mount  Desert.  A  friend  had  lent  her  a  house  there. 
"Long  Branch  was  getting  stupider  and  vulgarer  every 
year — it  was  intolerable  !"  She  found  to  her  dismay  that 
Mr.  Gano  was  not  inclined  to  take  this  view.  It  was  then 
she  realized  that  she  was  tired,  run  down,  even  a  little  ill. 
"  Would  Mr.  Gano  take  her  in  his  yacht  to  Bar  Harbor  ? 
He  needn't  stay  if  he  really  preferred  Long  Branch,  but  it 
would  be  a  charity/'  etc.  Well  she  knew  he  was  the  kind 

377 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

of  man  to  find  just  the  appeal  she  made  a  hard  one  to 
withstand.  Before  he  quite  realized  the  full  significance 
of  the  scheme,  lie  had  promised  she  should  go  round  by 
sea.  By  the  time  he  "understood,"  she  had  practised  her 
arts  with  such  success  that  he  no  longer  wanted  to  alter 
the  course  she  set.  "Circe"  saw  herself  on  the  point  of 
being  the  captain's  captain. 

They  were  to  start  the  next  day,  accompanied  by  Mrs. 
Suydam's  very  amenable  half-sister.  Ethan  was  going  over 
the  yacht  to  see  that  all  was  in  readiness.  Rummaging 
through  one  of  the  inconveniently  full  drawers  in  his 
cabin,  he  threw  out  on  the  floor  a  number  of  superfluous 
things  to  be  carried  away.  In  impatient  haste  he  tossed 
out  some  old  novels,  caps,  a  blazer,  a  roll  of  moth-eaten 
bunting.  "Wait  a  minute  —  isn't  that—  He  stooped 
and  picked  the  bunting  up.  It  unrolled  —  a  blue  flag, 
bearing  the  name  "Valeria''  in  white  letters.  He  stood 
with  the  end  in  his.  hand,  staring  at  it.  It  had  been  in 
the  bottom  drawer  since  the  day,  four  years  before,  when 
he  had  thrust  it  out  of  sight  after  getting  that  letter  from 
Mrs.  Gauo  :  "I  do  not  wish  you  to  call  your  yacht 
'Valeria/  There  are  plenty  of  other  names  without 
using  that  of  an  unmarried  girl." 

He  remembered  his  old  satisfaction  in  thinking  how, 
under  the  new  paint  as  well  as  in  the  cabin  drawer,  the 
boat  still  bore  the  forbidden  name,  faithful  to  the  first 
allegiance.  He  had  encouraged  Val  to  call  the  yacht 
hers  in  her  letters,  and  the  habit  had  clung  to  them  both. 
And  now  to-day,  of  all  days,  this  blue  flag  cornes  out  of 
hiding  and  goes  flaunting  along  the  floor  !  It  was  as  if 
Val  herself  had  walked  into  his  cabin,  to  reassert  her  right, 
to  keep  "her"  ship — that  she  never  yet  had  sailed  in,  and 
most  likely  never  would — to  keep  it,  notwithstanding,  free 
from  profanation. 

He  went  direct  to  Mrs.  Suydam's.  She  had  gone  for  a 
drive.  Mrs.  Ford,  her  sister,  was  also  out.  Only  Mr. 
Ford  was  at  home.  Ethan  found  that  gentleman  in  the 
billiard-room,  and  explained  that  he  had  a  sudden  need  to 

378 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

go  to  California — was,  in  point  of  fact,  taking  the  night 
train.  Mr.  Ford  was  an  experienced  yachtsman  ;  would 
he  look  after  the  ladies,  ask  whom  he  liked  ?  etc.  It  was 
all  arranged  in  ten  minutes,  and  Ethan  was  on  his  way  to 
the  Pacific  Coast  before  Mrs.  Suydam  had  heard  of  the 
failure  of  her  plan.  Had  it  been  the  sudden  effect  of 
looking  at  the  little  drama  through  Val's  eyes  that  had 
made  him  sicken  and  shrink  from  the  denouement  ?  Or 
was  he  simply  once  again  (as  had  happened  before  in  that 
first  year  after  parting  from  Val)  taking  flight  from  a 
temptation  that  would  have  interposed  an  evil  memory 
between  him  and — the  marriage  that  he  had  determined 
should  never  be  ? 

For  the  first  time  in  her  life  the  New  Plymouth  gayeties 
seemed  to  Val  insignificant,  even  irritating.  She  rejoiced 
that  Mrs.  Gano  was  so  much  better  that  she  let  Val  drive 
her  out  almost  daily.  They  were  more  than  ever  together, 
Emmie  being  absorbed  by  her  church  and  charity  work. 
One  day,  driving  back  into  the  town,  Val  was  laughing 
delightfully  at  her  grandmother's  caustic  remarks  upon 
the  "  flabby  philanthropy  "  of  a  certain  local  society.  They 
passed  some  soldiers  on  parade,  and  a  military  band  play 
ing  "Marching  Through  Georgia."  Mrs.  Gano's  face 
changed,  and,  to  Val's  amazement,  she  began  to  weep. 
Her  grandmother  !  who,  since  Val  was  a  child,  had  said 
at  times  when  other  people  cried  and  marvelled  that  Mrs. 
Gano  sat  dry-eyed,  "My  tears  lie  very  deep,  and  most  of 
them  I  shed  before  you  were  born  !"  This  sudden  gust  of 
sore  weeping  that  shook  her  to-day  stirred  the  young  girl's 
pulses  with  a  shamed  excitement,  an  obscure  gladness. 
She  could  feel,  too,  then,  even  yet,  with  passion  and  un 
restraint.  But  the  girl  looked  away,  and  presently  the 
shaken  voice  said  : 

"  The  poor  old  South  !  Did  you  see  the  ragged  flag, 
my  dear  ?" 

"Yes,  I  saw.  We  must  have  made  a  good  fight  that 
day." 

379 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

The  "  we"  on  the  lips  of  one  born  after  the  war,  who 
never  had  had  her  foot  in  the  South,  forged  a  new  link. 
Mrs.  Gano  had  put  her  hand  through  the  girl's  arm  and 
leaned  lightly  against  the  strong  young  shoulder. 

"One  may  be  proof  against  a  good  many  things  and  not 
be  proof  against  a  tattered  flag/'  she  said,  half  apologeti 
cally,  and  she  pulled  the  flapping  veil  across  her  face. 

The  old  woman  and  the  young  one  had  drawn  together 
in  friendship  absolute.  Not  that  Mrs.  Gano  developed  an 
angelic  complaisance,  or  Val  a  superstitious  reverence  for 
the  head  of  the  house.  They  were  not  merely  the  elder 
and  the  younger  of  the  same  race,  but  two  human  beings 
who,  side  by  side  for  many  years,  had  struggled  with  them 
selves  and  with  each  other,  striking  on  the  flint  of  charac 
ter,  each  knowing  at  last  exactly  when  the  sparks  would 
fly,  and  each  content  to  feel  that  the  fire  and  the  flint  were 
there. 

But  if  Val  Gano  were  not  the  most  irrational  of  her  sex, 
how  was  it  she  could  live  year  in,  year  out,  this  narrow  life, 
refusing  without  misgiving  the  only  apparent  ways  of  es 
cape,  waiting  for  an  event  that  even  the  eye  of  faith  might 
well  have  wearied  looking  for,  while  summer  passed  to  au 
tumn  and  winter  waned  to  spring  ? 

The  girl  believed,  or  made  herself  pretend  she  believed, 
that  the  longest  conceivable  term  of  her  waiting  was  the 
term  of  Mrs.  Gano's  life.  But  the  truth  was  even  simpler. 
Val,  unfortunately,  was  one  of  those  persons  who  do  not 
easily  accept  whatever  Fate  chooses  to  lay  at  their  door. 
She  was  rather  of  those  who  stand  ready  to  turn  away  the 
blind  bringer  of  gifts  with  the  rebuff  :  "I  will  have  noth 
ing  at  your  hands  but  the  thing  I  asked. " 

Vain,  apparently,  for  Harry  Wilbur,  vain  for  the  dash 
ing  new-comer,  Mr.  Lawrence  O'Neil,  to  think  time  was 
working  the  will  of  each.  Time  was  doing  nothing  so 
sensible. 


CHAPTER  XXVI 

ONE  of  the  things  nobody  had  been  able  to  get  Val  to  do 
any  more  was  to  sing.  This  had  been  at  first  set  down  to 
the  death  of  her  father,,  and  a  special  association  of  him 
with  music.  Even  Julia  shared  that  view. 

The  next  spring  after  the  summer  the  Otways  had  spent 
at  Long  Branch,  the  three  girls — Julia,  Emmie,  and  Val— 
sat  one  chill  afternoon  on  the  hearth-rug  before  the  fire  in 
the  blue  room.  With  very  buttery  fingers  they  were  eating 
the  last  of  a  great  bowl  of  popcorn.  Val,  who  had  presided 
over  the  popping,  was  losing  the  becoming  flush  that  oc 
cupation  lent  her.  The  years  had  taken  from  the  face 
something  of  its  old  look  of  frankness  and  love  of  fun,  that 
had  been  almost  boyish  in  its  simplicity.  The  subtler 
woman-look,  the  faint  suggestion  of  brooding  in  the  eyes, 
had  matured  the  face  and  lent  it  meaning.  Emmie  was 
the  same  pretty  creature,  a  little  more  fragile  than  before, 
whereas  Julia  was  blooming  and  bourgeoning  into  a  very 
handsome  woman  of  somewhat  majestic  proportions.  In 
stead  of  two,  she  looked  five  or  six  years  older  than  Val's 
twenty-three  years.  The  brown  and  choral  chine  silk  Julia 
wore  this  afternoon  was  turned  away  at  the  neck,  and  a 
lace  fichu  carefully  drawn  down  over  the  fine  bust  left  visi 
ble  the  prettiest  throat  in  the  world,  as  well  as  a  little  V- 
shaped  space  of  fair  white  neck. 

Emmie  was  tired  of  the  talk  of  a  party  to  which  she  was 
not  going.  It  was  on  the  night  of  the  choir  practice,  and, 
besides,  she  didn't  approve  of  dancing.  She  wiped  her 
buttery  fingers  on  her  handkerchief. 

"  Let's  go  down-stairs  and  try  our  new  hymn/'  she  said, 
getting  up. 

381 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  All  right/'  agreed  Julia. 

"  You  two  can,  if  you  like,"  said  Val. 

"  You  must  sing  us  '  Den  lieben  langen  Tag  ;'  I  haven't 
heard  it  for  years." 

"Don't  care  about  it  any  more."  Val  gathered  up  and 
crunched  the  hard  scorched  grains  that  had  remained  in 
the  bottom  of  the  bowl. 

"  Why  not  ?" 

"It's  absurd  to  try  to  sing  just  after  eating  pop-corn." 

"Nonsense!"  said  Emmie.  "Grandma's  reading  old 
letters  in  the  pack-room,  so  she  won't  hear.  If  you'll  put 
away  the  corn  popper,  I'll  get  the  key  of  the  piano." 

"  It's  a  great  pity  not  to  keep  up  your  music/'  said  Julia, 
as  Emmie  went  off  with  the  empty  bowl.  "You'll  get 
hopelessly  rusty." 

"I  shall  never  sing  a  note  as  long  as  I  live,"  said  Val, 
"  and  I  wish  you  wouldn't  bother  me  about  it  before  people." 

Julia  stared  at  her. 

"  You  ought  to  understand  without  my  telling  you.  It 
kills  me  to  do  it  half  and  half.  I'll  forget  I  ever  wanted  to 
have  music  in  my  life." 

"  You  mean,  I  must  never  ask  you  to  sing  again  ?" 

"  It's  the  one  thing  about  the  whole  matter  that  hurts 
most.  You  see,"  Val  said,  with  an  effort  to  speak  in  a 
commonplace  tone,  "  I'm  not  sulking  about  it,  I'm  not 
angry  ;  I've  simply  wiped  off  the  score." 

"  Dear  Val,  I'm  so  sorry  !"  Julia  got  up  and  put  her 
arms  about  her  friend.  "I  didn't  realize —  Oh,  dearie, 
how  hard  it's  been  for  you  all  this  time,  when  you  take  it 
like  that  !" 

"Like  what?" 

"So — so  quietly,  so  splendidly,"  said  Julia,  vaguely. 

"  Oh,  you  needn't  think  I'm  trying  to  be  a  heroine,"  said 
Val,  a  little  defiantly  ;  "  it's  just  that  I  prefer  not  being  a 
bungler  when  I  know  that  if  I'd  had  half  a  chance — "  She 
choked  suddenly,  and  flung  herself  down  before  the  fire 
with  her  face  hidden.  Julia  kneeled  beside  her,  murmur 
ing  sympathy. 

382 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

' '  I  think  such  a  lot  about  my  aunt  Valeria  these  days," 
said  Val,  sitting  up  presently  and  wiping  her  eyes.  "  This 
was  her  room,  you  know." 

Julia  nodded,  looking  round  upon  the  walls. 

"She  painted  these  things,  didn't  she  ?" 

"Yes,"  said  Val.  "Ain't  they  awful?  It  would  half 
kill  my  grandmother  to  hear  anybody  say  that,  and  yet 
it's  her  fault  that  they're  awful.  You  know  she  wouldn't 
let  Aunt  Valeria  go  away  and  study  when  she  was  young. 
Sh  !" 

Mrs.  G-ano's  voice  was  heard  outside  the  door  calling 
Emmie  to  hunt  for  a  certain  portfolio.  She  came  in,  look 
ing  through  her  spectacles  at  some  papers  in  her  hand. 
She  was  heavily  shawled  and  wore  gloves  (as  she  did  con 
stantly  now),  and  she  had  an  old  white  Indian  scarf  over 
her  head.  The  broche  ends  hung  down  to  her  knees.  She 
looked  up  sharply  from  the  yellowed  papers  as  she  came 
in.  The  two  girls  jumped  to  their  feet.  Mrs.  Gano  greet 
ed  Julia  cordially. 

"  Do  yon  want  us  to  go  ?"  asked  Val,  "'I  brought  Julia 
in  here  because  there  was  a  fire." 

"Certainly  don't  go,"  said  Mrs.  Gano.  "  I  only  came  in 
for  Valeria's  little  desk." 

Val  helped  to  take  off  the  carefully  made  cover  that  fitted 
over  it.  Between  the  cover  and  the  desk  was  something 
lying  flat,  carefully  done  up  in  tissue-paper.  Mrs.  Gano 
opened  it  and  smiled,  recognizing  the  scrawl  on  the  square 
of  card-board. 

"  Ah  !  Valeria's  first  attempt  at  a  portrait  of  her  father  ! 
She  was  a  mere  baby."  The  old  eyes  beamed  through  the 
gold-bound  spectacles,  tender  with  memory.  "  Her  broth 
er  Ethan  laughed  at  her,  and  said  it  was  more  like  the 
pear-tree  than  like  their  father — you  see  what  he  meant." 
She  laughed  gently.  "  But  Mr.  Gano  comforted  Valeria, 
and  said,  '  It's  quite  like  enough,  my  dear.  I've  no  desire 
to  have  my  daughter  a  limner.'''' 

"  Do  you  know,  I  can  never  get  over  the  idea  that  '  lim 
ner'  is  something  immoral — indecent,"  said  Val. 

383 


TILE    OPEN    (QUESTION 

Mrs.  Gano  smiled  reflectively.  "Neither  could  your 
grandfather.  That  was  the  dash  of  Puritan  in  him." 

"  Oh,  but  I  mean  the  mere  word.  You'told  us  that  story 
when  we  were  children,  and  I  didn't  dare  to  ask  ;  but  I  was 
sure  it  meant  something  horrid,  like  some  of  the  words  in 
the  Bible  that  look  quite  innocent  and  yet  mustn't  be  used 
in  general  conversation." 

"Not  at  all,"  said  Mrs.  Gano,  with  a  dignified  air. 
"Your  grandfather  was  merely  agreeing  with  Dr.  Johnson 
that  portrait-painting  was  an  improper  employment  for  a 
woman.  '  Public  practice  of  any  art  and  staring  in  men's 
faces  is  very  indelicate  in  a  female,' "  she  quoted,  but  she 
smiled  again.  "If  your  grandfather  had  lived,  none  of 
you  would  ever  have  had  a  drawing  lesson.  I  am  more 
liberal  about  these  things." 

Val  flashed  a  covert  look  at  Julia.  John  Gano  and  oth 
ers  had  filled  in  the  dim  outlines  of  Valeria's  life,  and  the 
things  she  had  left  behind  were  eloquent  in  a  way  their 
creator  never  dreamed,  and  would  bitterly  have  resented. 
Mrs.  Gano  was  lifting  up  the  desk. 

"  Let  me  carry  it  in  for  you,"  said  Val,  preceding  her 
grandmother  with  the  little  rosewood  box. 

As  she  came  back  Julia  heard  Val  in  the  hall  dismissing 
poor  Emmie  and  her  piano  key  with  short  shrift.  She 
closed  the  door  sharply,  and  confronted  her  friend  with 
ominous  eyes. 

"  How  my  grandmother  can  bear  to  be  so  much  in  that 
room  !" 

"  Without  a  fire  on  a  day  like  this  ?" 

"  Yes  ;  but  anyhow,  it's  horrible  in  there." 

"  I  thought  you  used  to  love  it  when  she  let  you  in." 

"  Yes,  when  I  was  little,  and  didn't  understand.  It's 
full  of  dilapidated  things  that  belonged  to  dead  people. 
Ethan's  father's  fiddle  —  smashed.  My  father's  patent 
lamps  —  none  of  'em  work.  Our  grandfather's  walking- 
sticks,  very  tired-looking,  leaning  dejected  against  the  wall 
under  a  faded  dirty  picture  of  the  Baptist  college  he  built— 
it's  a  Roman  Catholic  hospital  now.  And  then  that  thing  of 

384 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

Aunt  Valeria's — that's  the  worst  of  all  \"    She  came  nearer, 
and  crouched  down  on  the  rug  beside  her  friend. 

"  What  do  you  mean  ?" 

"A  pile  of  what  used  to  be  modelling  clay.  It's  quite 
black  now,,  but  if  you  see  it  in  one  particular  way  a  face 
seems  to  look  dimly  at  you  out  of  the  dust,  and,  oh  !  it's 
the  sorrowfullest  face  I  ever  saw.  It's  the  face  of  some 
body  who  hadn't  a  chance." 

"  What  is  it  like  ?" 

"My  opinion  is  it's  Aunt  Valeria's  face,  but  sometimes 
— sometimes  it  looks  like  me.'' 

Neither  spoke  for  awhile.  Val  sat  huddled  together 
staring  into  the  blaze. 

"  She  used  to  lie  on  the  rug  here  before  the  fire,  too." 

The  girl  threw  back  her  head  like  one  shaking  off  an 
evil  dream,  but  her  eye  was  suddenly  arrested. 

"  I  wonder  what  she  thought  of  Mazeppa." 

"  Mazeppa  ?"  echoed  Julia. 

"  Yes."  The  other  nodded  to  the  iron  bas-relief  above 
the  grate.  "  The  first  time  I  heard  father  talk  about  nat 
ural  law,  about  lines  of  least  resistance  and  all  kinds  of 
horrors  (ante  -  natal  tendencies  and  the  rest),  I  used  to 
think  of  Mazeppa,  and  feel  I  was  being  bound  on  the  wild 
horse  of  the  Past  and  left  to  the  wolves.  But  I  always 
knew  I  should  escape.  It  troubles  me  when  I  remember 
that  Aunt  Valeria  didn't.  And  perhaps  she  sat  here  with 
the  same  faith  I  have."  She  gave  a  little  shiver  and  stood 
up.  "No,  no;  of  course  we've  been  utterly  different 
from  the  beginning." 

"You've  changed  in  the  last  two  years  more  than  any 
body  I  ever  knew." 

Val  turned  quickly  upon  her  friend. 

"  You  mean,  I'm  getting  to  be  like  Aunt  Valeria  ?" 

"I  don't  know;  I  never  saw  her.  But  you — you  are 
getting  awfully  civilized." 

She  laughed.     Val  was  very  grave. 

"Do  you  remember,"  Julia  went  on,    "your   plan   of 
running  away  to  be  a  chorus-girl  ?" 
2s  385 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  Yes  " — the  answer  rang  sharply — "and  I  would  have 
done  it  too  but  that  grandma  needed  me —  She  stopped, 
with  a  face  suddenly  fear-stricken.  "It  looks  as  if  I  was 
growing  like  Aunt  Valeria" — she  walked  up  and  down  the 
room  with  her  head  caught  between  her  two  hands — "but 
I'm  not — I'm  not." 

She  stopped  before  Julia,  a  prey  to  the  feeling  that  if  she 
allowed  Julia  to  think  so  she  would  be  like  Aunt  Valeria. 
She  had  the  sense  of  one  lying  in  a  trance  :  that  if  he  does 
not  make  a  superhuman  effort  now  and  protest  effectively 
he  will  be  buried  alive.  The  girl  glanced  excitedly  round 
the  room,  and  felt  the  old  presence  egging  her  on.  It  was 
here  that  other  Valeria  had  dreamed  and  tried  to  work  ;  it 
was  here  she  faced  defeat — here  she  died,  looking  out  at 
dawn  to  the  rampart  hills  that  had  hemmed  them  both  in 
beyond  escape. 

"  Don't  think  I'm  the  very  least  like  her.  [  don't  want 
to  be  a  sculptor  or  a  poet,  and  that's  not  like  Aunt  Va 
leria.  I'm  not  staying  here  out  of  respect  for  any  silly  old 
family  traditions,  nor  even  because  my  grandmother  needs 
me.  I've  been  pretending.  I'm  really  staying  for  Ethan's 
sake"  —  her  face  grew  crimson — "that's  not  like  Aunt 
Valeria." 

"For  Ethan's  sake  !"  echoed  her  friend. 

"  Yes.  He  made  me  promise.  It's  only  for  a  little  while 
I  am  giving  up  my  music  not  because  I'm  growing  civil 
ized,  as  you  imagine,  but  because  I  shall  get  something 
I  want  more,  and  that's  not  like  Aunt  Valeria.  And  it 
doesn't  matter  who  says  '  No '  to  what  I  want :  /'//  have- 
it — yes,  I'll  have  it  in  spite  of  all  the  angels  in  heaven 
and  all  the  demons  in  hell,  and  that's  not  like  Aunt  Va 
leria  !" 

Julia,  still  sitting  on  the  hearth-rug,  had  leaned  forward, 
and  was  staring  at  Val  with  a  curious  expression.  The 
crouched-together  attitude  had  caused  an  envelope  the  girl 
had  hidden  in  her  bodice  to  work  up  to  the  bit  of  bare 
neck  revealed  by  the  low-folded  fichu.  Val  fastened  sharp 
eyes  upon  that  part  of  the  familiar  gray-blue  paper  where 

386 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

in  Ethan's  unmistakable  hand  she  read  as  much  of  Julia's 
last  name  as  "tway."  Val's  fixed  stare  made  the  other 
look  down.  Two  guilty  hands  flew  to  her  breast. 

"  Will  you  let  me  see  that  letter  ?"  said  Val. 

"No."" 

"  You  must.     I've  told  you  my  secret/' 

"I  didn't  ask  you  to." 

Julia  got  up. 

"  There's  something  in  it  you're  ashamed  to  show/'  said 
Val. 

"Not  at  all." 

"  How  long  have  you  been  corresponding  with  Ethan  ?" 

"  You've  no  right  to  cross-question  me.    I'm  going  home." 

She  moved  to  the  door,  and  turned  as  she  put  her  hand 
on  the  knob  to  say  good-bye.  The  word  died  on  her  lips 
as  she  saw  Val's  face.  Before  Julia  quite  realized  what 
was  happening,  the  other  had  leaped  upon  her  like  a 
young  panther,  and  was  tearing  away  the  fichu  at  her 
neck.  A  short  struggle,  and  the  letter  was  dragged  out  of 
its  hiding-place.  Val  tore  open  the  door  and  fled  down 
stairs,  out  across  the  back  and  round  the  wooden  L,  in  at 
the  side -porch,  through  the  kitchen,  crying  to  Jerusha, 
"Don't  tell  Julia  where  I  am  !"  up  the  back-stairs,  and 
into  an  unused  room  opening  onto  the  long  hall.  She 
locked  herself  in,  and  sat  down  in  the  dim  light.  Every 
pulse  in  her  body  was  thumping  like  a  stamp-mill.  She 
slipped  onto  her  knees  before  the  shrouded  window,  and 
with  quivering  hands  took  out  of  the  crumpled  envelope 
several  sheets  of  thin  blue  Irish  linen-paper  closely  written. 

"  Oh,  longer  than  any  of  mine  !"  she  availed,  in  her  sore 
heart. 

But,  stop  !  it  wasn't  all  one  letter.  A  little  note  was  to 
apologize  to  "  Dear  Miss  Julia"  for  not  answering  her  two 
former  "  charming  letters,"  and  to  decline  with  many 
thanks  the  Otways'  kind  invitation  to  come  and  visit  them. 

"  The  audacity  !     To  visit  them  indeed  !" 

His  excuse  was  the  pressure  of  political  engagements. 

"  She  had  to  write  two  charming  letters  to  get  this." 

387 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

But  the  postmark  was  the  capital  of  the  State.  He  was 
less  than  two  hours  away!  The  other — the  long  commu 
nication — lacked  the  first  page,  according  to  the  number 
ing.  She  turned  to  the  broken  sentence  at  the  beginning  : 

"...  realized  I  was  rather  too  notoriously  a  '  rich  man'  to  stand 
much  chance  of  election,  but  I  was  at  least  a  man  who  could  afford  to 
be  defeated,  and  yet  go  on  doing  his  level  best  to  serve  his  country.  I 
started  in,  believing  that  the  way  to  serve  her  best  was  by  being  a 
Republican  and  a  Sound  Money  man.  It  was  all  very  well  to  say  my 
own  private  interests  lay  along  that  line  ;  I  believed  the  public  inter 
est  did  as  well.  But  I  \v:is  not  satisfied  to  be  'run'  in  blinders  by 
an  agent  or  a  committee,  pledged  to  see  nothing  but  party  advantages, 
pledged  to  controvert  opposing  opinions,  however  sound  or  unfore 
seen.  I  couldn't  help  seeing  the  other  side.  That's  my  special  curse, 
by  the  way,  and  will  stand  forever  between  me  and  effective  action. 
I  have  been  about  among  the  working-classes  and  the  idle  poor.  I 
took  nobody's  word.  I  investigated  for  myself  the  trades-unions,  the 
various  political  and  industrial  organizations.  I  looked  into  Pullman 
patriarchal  tyranny  and  into  Carnegie  despotism,  and  recalled  the 
more  humane,  more  democratic,  attitude  of  masters  to  men  in  the 
effete  monarchies  abroad.  Here,  in  free  America,  tyranny  stalks 
naked  and  unashamed.  The  employment  of  politics  for  mere  private 
gain,  the  abuse  of  patronage,  and  in  business  the  war  of  extermina 
tion  waged  by  trusts  and  combines— everywhere  the  right  of  mon 
eyed  might,  the  rich  playing  into  the  hands  of  the  rich  while  pretend 
ing  to  serve  the  people — all  this  opened  my  eyes.  I  have  just  come 
from  Ironville.  The  strike  is  not  going  to  be  settled  so  easily,  al 
though  the  suffering  is  appalling.  The  masters  mean  to  starve  the 
men  to  death  ;  the  men  mean  to  blow  the  masters  to  atoms.  This  is 
the  union  I  find  in  my  native  land— this  the  new  free  brotherhood  of 
men.  Sharks  devouring  little  fishes  ! 

"What  with  lawless  greed  on  one  side  and  lawless  need  on  the 
other,  the  outlook  frowns.  The  question  of  the  future  isn't  silver 
versus  gold,  it  isn't  Republican  against  Democrat,  nor  North  against 
Souih,  nor  East  against  West,  but  human  dignity  and  decency  against 
capitalist  slave-drivers  and  despoilers  of  the  poor.  You  know  the 
spirit  of  fervor  and  of  patriotism  that  carried  me  into  the  campaign. 
I  tell  you  I'm  sick  with  disillusionment. 

"  I  am  far  more  afraid  of  being  elected  than  of  facing  defeat.  I 
have  learned  that  these  measures  I  proposed  in  such  good  faith  are 
half-measures  foredoomed  to  failure.  Give  me,  if  you  can,  some  good 
reason  to  believe  that  this  great  and  prosperous  America  is  not  like  to 
become  the  devil's  drill-ground.  Yours  very  sincerely, 

"  ETHAN  GANO." 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"Well,  of  all  the  funny  letters  for  a  man  to  write  a 
girl !" 

Julia  give  him  a  reason  !  Julia  setting  herself  up  as 
understanding  politics  I  To  be  sure,  she  was  two  years 
older  than  Val,  and  was  always  seeing  her  father's  politi 
cal  friends  ;  but  that  didn't  account  for.  ...  It  came 
over  her  how  little  one  woman  knows  the  side  another 
woman  turns  to  men.  It  must  be  immensely  nattering  to 
have  a  "politician"  writing  to  her  on  terms  of  equality. 
Oh  yes,  Julia  must  be  enormously  uplifted.  Val  was 
sure  of  it  by  the  heaviness  that  weighed  her  down.  Julia, 
no  doubt,  had  "studied  up"  in  order  to  share  Ethan's  in 
terests  on  a  side  that  Val  and  other  girls  couldn't  reach. 

As  she  came  out  of  her  hiding-place  she  was  concocting 
in  her  mind  a  letter  which  the  servant  should  carry  over 
to  Julia  with  the  confiscated  correspondence. 

Her  excitement  had  died  down,  leaving  for  the  moment 
a  dead  weight  of  wretchedness.  Ethan's  letters  to  her  had 
seemed  before  so  full  and  satisfactory,  even  her  hungry 
curiosity  had  felt  no  want  in  them  that  a  letter  could 
supply.  For  even  the  love  he  did  not  put  into  words  seemed 
not  only  implicit  in  every  line  of  each  "  enclosure,"  but 
more  subtly  delicious  being  veiled.  His  letters  had  filled 
up  the  empty  spaces  in  her  life,  seeming  to  carry  her  along 
step  by  step  through  his.  But  if  there  was  all  this  besides 
which  he  cared  to  write  to  Julia,  what  more  might  there 
not  be  in  a  life  so  full  and  varied  as  his  ?  How  had  she 
been  so  blind,  so  easily  content  ?  It  was  years  since  they 
had  said  good-bye.  Wasn't  nearly  every  novel  in  the  world 
a  warning  against  believing  that  men  remembered  long  the 
girl  who  was  out  of  sight  ?  No  doubt,  what  she  had  dimly 
feared  had  happened  at  Long  Branch  last  summer — Julia 
had  improved  the  shining  hour. 

Val  went  wearily  down  the  long  hall,  feeling  that  all  the 
zest  had  gone  out  of  existence  forever.  She  stopped  to 
lean  against  the  last  window  at  the  head  of  the  back-stairs. 
Looking  out,  she  saw  to  her  surprise  that  Julia  was  sitting 
on  the  terrace  under  the  crooked  catalpa-tree.  Ah,  she 

889 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

couldn't  go  and  leave  that  precious  letter  behind  !  Val 
went  down  to  her  with  angry-beating  heart.  The  other 
girl,  leaning  back  against  the  tree,  watched  with  sullen 
eyes  the  slow  approach.  She  had  wrapped  the  torn  fichu 
up  close  about  her  throat.  Something  in  Julia's  handsome 
impassivity  stirred  the  other  to  a  rage,  more  becoming  had 
she  not  been  the  arch  offender.  She  dropped  the  crumpled 
envelope  into  Julia's  lap. 

"I  congratulate  you  on  being  able  to  hold  up  your  end 
of  such  a  weighty  correspondence." 

"Is  that  all  you  have  to  say  after  leaping  at  me  like  a 
wild-cat  and  taking  what  didn't  belong  to  you  ?" 

"  Oh,  you're  waiting  here  for  me  to  apologize  ?" 

Julia  got  up  slowly. 

"I  never  thought  yon  would  do  such  a  dishonorable 
thing  !" 

"It  wasn't  dishonorable.  You  and  I  were  'best  friends.' 
I  had  just  given  you  my  Avhole  confidence.  You  owed  it 
to  me  to  be  as  frank  with  me.  I  took  what  belonged  to 
me." 

"And  I  say  that  if  you  broke  into  our  house  and  stole 
the  silver,  you  couldn't  be  more  of  a  thief  than  you  are 
this  moment." 

Val  stared  at  her  speechless,  and  then  : 

"I  think  if  you  were  a  man  I  could  kill  you.  Why  do 
you  stay  here  ?"  she  said,  coming  a  step  nearer  with  ill-con 
trolled  fury.  "  We  aren't  expecting  Ethan  to-day.  Why 
do  you  stay  ?" 

Julia  squared  her  Junoesque  shoulders  against  the 
crooked  tree  and  stood  her  ground. 

"  You  can,  of  course,  behave  like  a  wild  savage  if  it  suits 
you,  but  I'd  like  to  know  what  you  mean  to  do." 

"Do!"  Val  dropped  her  arms  listless  to  her  sides. 
"  What  is  there  to  do  ?" 

"Shall  you  tell  your  cousin  you  stole  his  letters  ?" 

"No.  I  shall  tell  my  cousin  exactly  what  happened." 
She  turned  to  go  up  to  the  house. 

"I  wouldn't,  if  I  were  you.  Look  here,  there's  no  reason, 

890 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

because  our  friendship's  broken,  that  we  should  do  more 
things  we  shall  regret.  You've  no  right  because  you've  got 
hold  of  my  secret — you've  no  right  to  pass  it  on  to  Ethan." 
It  was  an  agony  to  hear  her  call  him  Ethan.  "You  mustn't 
tell  him  that  I — that  I  carry  his  letters  about.  And  I 
won't  tell  him  that  you — ' 

"  Tell  him  what  you  like  !" 

Val  went  angrily  up  the  terrace-steps  ;  but  all  the  same, 
Julia  knew  perfectly  that  she  had  secured  herself  now 
against  Ethan's  hearing  what  had  happened.  Val  could, 
most  indefensibly,  tear  her  secret  out  of  her  keeping  in  the 
passion  of  the  moment.  Bat  Julia  had  little  fear  that  in 
cold  blood  her  old  friend  would  "give  her  away"  to  the 
man  they  both  loved. 


CHAPTER  XXVII 

THAT  night  Mrs.  Gano  was  prostrated  by  a  feverish  cold 
The  doctor  was  seiit  for,  and  Val  carried  out  his  instruc 
tions  so  faithfully  that  in  twenty-four  hours  the  patient  was 
comfortably  mending. 

In  the  intervals  of  nursing  Val  had  written  to  Ethan  in 
pencil : 

"  I've  got  to  see  you.  It  doesn't  matter  that  I  can't  ask  you  to  the 
Fort,  or  that  grandma  is  not  to  know.  You  must  come  ;md  stay  a 
day  or  two  at  some  small  town  quite  near  here.  I'll  get  a  day  off  for 
a  picnic  or  something,  and  meet,  you  cither  in  Blake's  Woods,  or  at 
one  of  the  steamboat  landings  up  the  river.  Don't  hesitate  about  this. 
I'm  not  a  child,  and  I've  a  right  to  see  you  about  a  matter  so  important 
to  me." 

She  closed  without  a  hint  as  to  what  the  matter  was. 

He  answered  by  return  of  post,  pointing  out  that  he 
couldn't  possibly  come  to  see  her  clandestinely,  for  her 
own  sake. 

"For  my  sake  !  Not  a  bit  of  it.  For  grandma's  sake, 
lie's  afraid." 

The  conclusion  was  the  easier  in  that  she  was  herself 
afraid.  It  was  then  Val  remembered  that  Mrs.  Ball,  the 
former  Jessie  llornsey,  who  now  lived  in  the  capital  of  the 
State,  had  several  times  asked  Val  to  visit  her.  The  girl 
went  out  and  sent  the  lady  a  telegram.  "  I'm  going  to  stay 
a  few  days  with  Mrs.  Austin  Ball,"  she  announced  with  out 
ward  calm  and  much  inward  trepidation  when  she  came 
home. 

"  You  are  going —  '    Mrs.  Gano  sat  up  in  bed  and  stared. 

"Oh,  Val,"  remonstrated  Emmie,  "and  grandma  ill  in 
bed  !" 

393 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"That  lias  nothing  to  do  with  it,"  said  the  invalid, 
shortly.  "But  my  house  is  not  a  Family  Hotel  for  people 
to  come  and  go  as  they — "  A  sneeze  spoiled  the  effect  she 
•vas  making. 

"There,  you've  caught  more  cold  !" 

Emmie  rushed  across  the  room  and  brought  a  shawl. 
Viil  wanted  to  help  put  it  round  her.  Mrs.  Gano  waved 
her  off,  took  the  shawl  herself,  and  with  some  premonition, 
perhaps,  of  a  coming  crisis,  said  : 

"  What  does  this  mean  ?" 

"  It  means  that  at  last  I  want  to  accept  one  of  Mrs.  Ball's 
dozen  invitations.  The  doctor  says  you're  better.  You 
could  telegraph  me  if— 

"  That's  all  very  well,  but  in  this  house  it  is  customary — 

"Yes,  yes,  dearest ;  I  know  it's  customary  to  ask  leave, 
and  I  do  ask  it.  But  you  must  let  me  go.  I — I  never  go 
anywhere,  I  never  do  anything  ;  all  my  life  is  slipping 
away,  just  as  Aunt  Valeria's  did." 

The  old  woman  looked  into  the  young  face  and  read  the 
signs  there  misguidedly  enough  to  say  : 

"Well,  well,  we  can't  very  well  afford  it,  but  perhaps  a 
little  change— 

"Til  make  it  up,  you'll  sec." 

No  later  than  that  same  afternoon  the  girl  was  on  her 
way.  She  had  given  Ethan  no  warning — did  not  even  know 
if  she  would  find  him  still  at  the  hotel  from  which  he  had 
written  to  Julia  :  but  she  drove  straight  to  the  Wharton 
House,  learned  that  he  was  in,  and  sent  up  word  that  a  lady 
wanted  to  see  him. 

While  she  sat  there,  oblivious  of  the  expensive  ugliness 
of  the  empty  hotel  parlor,  the  thought  of  seeing  Ethan 
iii'ter  all  these  years  did  not  shut  out  the  haunting  remem 
brance  of  her  grandmother.  If  that  scorner  of  deceptions 
could  see  her  now  !  If  she  ever  came  to  know  that  Val, 
whom  she  trusted,  had  acted  this  complicated  lie  in  order, 
most  unmaiden-like,  to  beg  a  stolen  interview  with  a  man  ! 
She  cringed  at  the  thought  of  the  old  woman's  high  unspar 
ing  scorn.  "'Why  do  I  always  think  of  her  !  Other  girls 

yoa 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

don't  take  even  their  fathers  and  mothers  so  seriously. 
They  aren't  haunted  by  them."  She  hunched  her  shoulders 
with  discomfiture.  Why  didn't  Ethan  come  ?  What 
would  her  grandmother  say?  It  would  he  distinctly  awful 
to  be  despised  by  her.  Should  she  save  her  reputation  by 
running  a\vay  without  seeing  Ethan  ?  It  seemed  a  sudden 
blessed  way  of  escape  from  domestic  degradation.  She 
half  rose,  staring  absently  .at  the  sofa  pattern.  Suddenly 
the  perplexed  eyes  widened  ;  the  vague  design  of  the  satin 
damask  had  wrought  itself  into  her  brain.  Out  of  the 
scrolls  and  arabesques  a  face  seemed  staring  at  her.  With 
a  twist  of  pain  she  recognized  it— that  sorrowfullest  of  all 
faces— that  face  of  some  one  who  never  had  a  chance.  The 
poor  dim  ghost  that  had  been  shut  up  so  long  in  Aunt 
Valeria's  dusty  heap  of  clay,  that  had  appeared  to  Val  like 
a  shadowy  face  at  a  prison  grating — it  had  escaped  at  last  : 
it  wns  here  I 

As  she  sank  back  in  the  corner,  the  old  tide  of  revolt, 
rose  high  within  her;  but  the  ilood  to-day  was  chill  with 
fear  of  failure,  and  bitter  with  the  memory  of  those  others 
who  had  been  overwhelmed.  Val  had  herself  given  up  all 
"'chances"  for  this  one  that  she  was  reaching  out  for  to 
day.  She  was  here  to  put  that  one  to  proof,  and—  Ethan 
was  at  the  door  !  In  that  first  instant  of  his  non-recogni 
tion  her  heart  turned  sick,  so  cold  he  looked,  and  so  re 
mote,  forbidding  even.  She  got  up  and  came  forward. 

Ethan  cried  out  in  astonishment,  throwing  down  his 
hat : 

"  Yuu  !     Xo,  not  really  !" 

*•'  Yes." 

He  took  both  her  hands,  and  looked  into  her  face.  Had 
she  really  thought  him  cold  ?  Turning,  he  glanced  about 
the  room,  as  if  to  assure  himself  they  were  alone.  She  dis 
engaged  her  hands. 

"  Come  out  and  walk  ;  I  don't  like  it  here,"  she  said. 

He  looked  at  .her  reflectively,  and  yet  with  a  kind  of 
smouldering  excitement. 

t(  We'll  get  a  victoria,  and  drive  out  to  the  country." 

394 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

He  led  the  way  down-stairs.     "  But  how  on  earth  have  you 

managed  it  ?"  he  said. 

"I  didn't  manage,  I  just  came." 

"  Grandmamma  is  with  you  ?" 

-'Oh  no." 

"Who,  then?" 

'''Nobody." 

'•'  She  hasn't  let  you  come  alone  ?" 

He  stopped. 

"  Oh,  it's  all  right,"  she  said,  a  little  impatiently.  "Fve 
come  to  visit  an  old  school-friend." 

They  chose  one  of  the  carriages  in  front  of  the  hotel,  and 
drove  rapidly  out  of  town. 

She  shrank  back  into  her  corner,  feeling  his  eyes  too 
keen  upon  her  ;  but  when  by  chance  she  encountered  them, 
she  would  have  been  less  than  woman  if  she  had  not  been 
reassured  by  the  admiration  in  their  kindling  depths. 

"  I  suppose  I'm  changed  too,"  he  said,  smiling. 

"  Y-yes  ;  you're  a  little  more  alarming  than  you  used  to 
be." 

"  Ob,  really  !"  he  laughed. 

"  I  suppose  the  change  in  me  is  a  different  one  ?" 

He  nodded. 

"  You've  kept  your  word." 

"  My  word  ?" 

"  Don't  you  remember  telling  me  that  I  was  rather  good- 
looking  at  that  time,  but  the  difference  between  us  was 
that  you'd  improve  and  that  I'd  grow  repellent  and  plain  if 
I  wasn't  very  careful  ?" 

fi  I  never  said  such  a — 

"  Oh  yes.  You  used  to  be  a  wise  child.  Are  you  a  wise 
woman  ?" 

"Not  enough  to  hurt,"  she  said,  with  a  little  grimace. 

He  asked  about  Mrs.  Gano  and  Emmie,  and  the  bed 
ridden  An'  Jerusha.  The  year  before,  Venus  had  married 
the  mulatto  postman,  and  Val,  at  Ethan's  suggestion,  had 
bought  them  a  cottage,  where  they  all  lived  very  happily. 
Val  told  him  of  the  advent  of  the  twins. 

895 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  What  are  you  doing  here  ?"  she  inquired,  presently. 

"Political  business." 

"I  suppose  you  think  I  wouldn't  understand  that/' 

"  I  think  it  would  probably  bore  you." 

"  AVhy  bore  me  more  than  any  other  girls  ?" 

"  I  didn't  say  so.     But  most  young  ladies  of  your  age — " 

"I'll  soon  be  twenty-three;  Julia  is  only  twenty-four." 

She  could  have  bit  her  tongue  out  for  her  maladroitness. 

"  Julia  ?     Ah,  how  is  Julia  ?" 

"  This  is  pretty  ;  let  us  stop  here." 

"  All  right.  Driver,  just  pull  up  in  that  shade  and  wait 
for  us." 

They  walked  across  the  field,  to  a  clump  of  trees  by  the 
Virginia  rail -fence  that  separated  them  from  the  large 
market-garden  on  the  other  side. 

"  Now  that  I've  come  all  this  way,"  Val  said,  leaning 
against  one  of  the  elms,  with  her  hands  loosely  clasped  in 
front  of  her,  "  I  want  to  run  home  and  leave  things  to 
chance." 

He  made  no  answer.  She  glanced  up  to  find  him  look 
ing  at  her  with  an  intentness  that  confused  her.  She 
turned  away,  sat  down,  and  took  off  her  hat.  Her  hair 
was  loose  ;  she  pinned  it  up  as  well  as  she  could,  but  her 
hands  felt  unskilful,  helpless.  She  could  not  free  herself 
from  the  sense  of  those  deep  eyes  arraigning,  caressing, 
compelling  her.  She  looked  up  with  a  fluttering  smile. 

"  Sit  down,  and  doir  t  stare." 

He  only  leaned  back  against  the  opposite  elm. 

"Yes,  there's  some  other  change  in  you  besides  the 
growing  prettier.  What's  happened  ?" 

In  the  hypersensitized  state  of  her  nerves  the  question 
hurt  keenly.  That  they  should  not  have  met  for  all  this 
time,  and  he  ask  that  !  It  was  all  she  could  do  to  keep  the 
tears  out  of  her  lowered  eyes. 

"Come,"  he  urged,  "is  some  of  the  gilt  worn  off  your 
particular  piece  of  gingerbread  ?" 

"  No," she  said,  with  recovered  firmness ;  "I've  not  come 
to  complain.  I've  only  come  to  be  helped  to  understand." 

3UO 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

'•'Ah,  life  has  pricked  you,  I  see  that — and" — he  smiled 
faintly — "you  don't  understand." 

"  Yes,"  she  said — the  voice  was  not  quite  so  steady — 
ei  I've  got  hurt.  If  Fd  sat  quiet,  I  wouldn't  have  bumped 
myself  against  sharp  corners.  But  I  shall  not  sit  quiet/' 

"  Oh  no,  you  may  he  depended  on  for  that." 

e '  But  I  have  sat  quiet,  you  know,  for  years.  That's  done 
with,  now." 

He  shifted  his  position  uneasily. 

"  I  don't  want  any  longer  to  be  always  fortunate,  al 
ways  happy.  I  want  to  know  about  life.  J  want  to  under 
stand." 

Still  he  said  nothing. 

"  It's  a  kind  of  death  not  to  understand,"  she  said. 

"  And  has  some  of  Death's  peace  to  recommend  it.  But 
let's  come  to  Hecuba.  What  do  you  want  to  understand  ?" 

"  It — is  so — hard  for  me  to  say." 

(i  Harder  than  not  understanding  ?" 

"  No.  I — want  to  know — if  you  have  any  objection  to 
releasing  me  from  my  promise  ?" 

"  What  promise  ?" 

She  put  her  hands  up,  quickly,  to  hide  her  convulsed 
face.  He  had  forgotten  ! 

"  If  you  don't  remember,  that's  release  enough,"  she  said, 
getting  up. 

He  came  forward  and  put  his  hand  on  her  arm. 

"You  don't  mean  that  about  your  going  away  from 
home  ?" 

She  nodded  her  averted  head. 

"  Certainly  I  won't  release  you  from  that  promise." 

"  Why  not  ?"  She  turned  swiftly  on  him.  "  What  is  it 
to  you  ?" 

"  It's  a  great  deal  to  me." 

' '  Well,  it's  more  to  me.  I've  come  to  say  I  take  my 
promise  back." 

He  bent  down  to  her. 

"You  didn't  come  to  say  that,  Val." 

Her  wet  eyes  fell  before  his  softened  looks. 

397 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  I — I  can't  say  just  what  I  came  to  say." 

"Why  not?" 

"  You're  gone  so  far  from  me." 

"No,  I  haven't,  dear."  The  dark  face  was  close  to  hers. 
"  I've  tried,  perhaps,  but  I  haven't  succeeded.  Val — " 

He  drew  her  suddenly  into  his  arms.  She  resisted  a  mo 
ment,  and  then,  with  a  little  cry  of  self-abandonment,  she 
hid  her  face  on  his  breast.  They  stood  so  till,  with  an  in 
finitely  tender  movement,  he  turned  the  lithe  body  over 
into  tlie  hollow  of  his  arm,  and  kissed  the  upturned  face. 
She  broke  away  trembling. 

"Now  I  can  ask  you  what  I  came  to  ask.  Have  you 
been  caring  about  some  one  else  more  than  you've  been  car 
ing  about  me  ?" 

"  What  in  the  world  put  that  into  your  head  r" 

"You  have — you  have  !"  she  said,  getting  white. 

"But  I  have  not." 

"  You  like  writing  to  others  more  than  you  do  to  me." 

"I  don't,  indeed.  It  bores  me  horribly  to  write  to  other 
people." 

"  Why  do  you  do  it,  then  ?" 

"Oh,  you're  thinking  of  the  letters  I  write  Otway." 

"Who?" 

"Hezekiah  Otway.     You  see,  he's  chairman  of  our — " 

She  darted  forward  and  seized  his  hands,  laughing  and 
holding  them  to  her  breast  as  she  looked  up,  radiant,  into 
his  face. 

"  Now  we'll  drive  into  town,  if  you  please." 

They  went  back  to  the  carriage,  and  Yal  talked  gnyly 
about  the  Fort  and  the  people  Ethan  had  known  when  lie 
was  in  New  Plymouth. 

"  Where  shall  we  meet  to-morrow  ?"  she  said,  when  they 
were  again  in  the  town. 

"  Where  does  your  Mrs.  Ball  live  ?" 

"  In  the  Chestnutville  suburb.     But  that's  no  good." 

"  No  good  ?" 

"  No  ;  I've  told  you  she's  Miss  Jessie  Ilornsey.'' 

"Is  that  fatal?" 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

{i  Well,  she'll  want  to  do  all  the  talking.  You  can  come 
there  of  course,  but  it  won't  be  seeing  you." 

He  considered. 

"  How  long  shall  you  stay  ?" 

"Mustn't  be  more  than  three  or  four  days." 

He  crossed  swords  with  his  conscience  and  still  con 
sidered. 

"  You  must  come  in  the  morning  and  take  me  boating/' 
she  said. 

He  laughed. 

"  Oh,,  adorable  directness  !  How  it  simplifies  all  things  ! 
Boating  be  it." 

"  We  must  go  quickly  to  the  station  for  my  things  ;  the 
train  I'm  due  by  is  just  in." 

After  getting  her  trunks  and  travelling-bag,  they  said 
good-bye,  and  Val  drove  alone  to  West  Walnut  Street. 

Mrs.  Ball  received  the  girl  warmly,  and  with  apologies  at 
having  only  just  come  in  and  found  her  message. 

"  I'm  simply  delighted  to  have  got  you  at  last.  I  only 
hope  you  won't  find  it  dull.  If  you'd  given  me  a  little 
longer  notice,  I  would  have  had  some  parties  planned,  and 
got  Harry  Wilbur  to  come.  How  is  my  handsome  cousin  ?" 

"Oh,  he's  all  right;  and  dear  Mrs.  Ball  "—the  girl  sat 
down  on  a  stool  and  crossed  her  arms  on  her  hostess's  knee 
— "  the  fact  is,  I've  come  on  some  private  business.  I 
haven't  time  for  parties.  If  you  want  to  bean  angel  to  me, 
just  let  me  go  and  come  as  I  please,  for  the  two  or  three 
days  I'm  here." 

"Days  ?  Make  it  two  or  three  weeks,  my  dear.  You 
know  you've  always  been  an  immense  favorite  of  mine  ;  my 
husband  likes  you,  too.  He  said  when  we  visited  my 
mother's  last  year  that  you  were  the  most  charming  girl  in 
New  Plymouth.  Now  it's  settled,  and  I  think  I  heard 
Austin  come  in."  She  kissed  Val  on  both  cheeks,  and 
went  down-stairs  to  confide  to  Mr.  Ball  that  "the  most 
charming  girl"  was  not  in  New  Plymouth,  but  under  his 
roof,  and  was  evidently  up  to  some  mischief,  and  what 
ought  they  to  do  ? 

399 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  Play  dominos  !"  Mr.  Ball's  childish  old  father  sug 
gested  vacantly. 

That  favorite  pastime  meant  to  him  shuffling  the  domi 
noes  aimlessly  about  the  table,  and  in  his  more  lucid  inter 
vals  rising  to  the  height  of  matching  them. 

"  Yes,  paw."  The  good  Mrs.  Ball  emptied  the  dominos 
out  of  the  box  and  set  the  old  man  to  turning  them  face 
downwards.  He  went  to  sleep  before  the  task  was  done. 

"  Oh  /"  ejaculated  Mrs.  Ball,  suddenly  catching  sight  of 
something  in  the  evening  paper  her  husband  was  unfolding. 

((  What  ?"  She  pointed  to  a  paragraph  announcing  the 
meeting  of  the  Sound  Money  men  at  the  Central  Hall. 
Chairman,  Mr.  He'zekiah  Otway.  Debate  to  be  opened  by 
Mr.  Ethan  Gauo,  etc. 

"  That's  why  she's  come." 

"Oh,  think  so?" 

"Sure  of  it."  The  round  good-natured  face  grew  grave. 
"Husband,  I  think  I  ought  to  put  Harry  Wilbur  on  his 
guard." 

"Don't  you  meddle  with  outsiders'  affairs,"  said  hus 
band. 

"  My  dear,  Val  Gano's  as  good  as  engaged  to  my  cousin. 
Harry  was  very  confidential  with  me  the  last  time  he  was 
here.  This  Ethan  Gano  was  at  one  time  the  barrier.  Such 
a  fascinating  creature,"  she  sighed.  "  Xot  a  marrying 
man,  and  most  dangerous.  He  sha'n't  come  between  them 
again." 

"You  can't  interfere  if — " 

"  I  can  wire  my  cousin  to  come  and  make  us  a  visit,  and 
I  will."  She  bustled  out. 

While  Val  was  in  her  first  beauty  sleep,  Harry  Wilbur  ar 
rived. 


CHAPTER  XXVIII 

THE  morning  was  warm  and  balmy.  Val  put  on  her  blue 
muslin  gown,  thinking  rebelliously  how  Ethan  had  once 
said  that  a  serge  coat,  and  skirt,  and  sailor  hat  were  the 
proper  "togs"  for  the  river. 

"  Togs  "  was  a  proper  ugly  word  for  such  garments.  No 
stiff  tailor-made  things  for  Val  !  "  He  said  I'd  grown  pret 
tier,"  she  thought,  gayly,  as  she  took  a  last  look  in  the  glass. 
But  it  was  the  thousandth  time  she  had  quoted  the  com 
fortable  assurance  to  her  happy  heart. 

She  met  the  unexpected  Harry  at  breakfast  with  such 
apparent  cordiality  that  Mrs.  Ball  was  slightly  perplexed, 
even  slightly  disappointed. 

"  Now,  what  are  we  going  to  do  to-day  ?"  asked  the 
hostess,  in  the  middle  of  the  meal.  "  It's  such  a  comfort, 
Harry,  that  you  happen  along  at  just  this  moment.  A 
man  is  so  useful  in  helping  to  arrange  things  ;  and  Austin, 
of  course,  is  too  busy."  Austin  was  already  at  the  office. 

"I've  just  had  a  note  from  my  cousin,  Ethan  Gano." 
Val  put  her  hand  on  an  envelope  that  lay,  address  down 
ward,  on  the  cloth.  "He's  at  the  Wharton  House.  He'll 
be  here  at  ten  to  take  me  for  a  row."  It  had  given  her 
acute  discomfort  to  make  the  announcement,  and  the  look 
on  the  two  faces  opposite  did  not  restore  her  equanimity. 

After  an  expressive  little  silence,  Mrs.  Ball  said  : 

"Yes,  it  '11  be  nice  on  the  river  to-day.  We  can  all  go. 
I'll  see  about  a  luncheon-basket  ;"  and  she  rang  the  bell. 

Thereafter  the  conversation  flagged..  At  ten  o'clock 
Ethan  duly  appeared,  spotless  in  boating  flannels  and  white 
shoes.  There  is  no  more  becoming  garb  for  the  modern 
man.  Val  forgot  her  discomfiture  a  moment,  looking  at 

401 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

him.  Mrs.  Ball  compared  her  cousin's  "business  suit " 
unfavorably  with  the  new-comer's  elegance,  and  promptly 
set  down  Gano's  grace  to  his  clothes. 

Val  had  been  afraid  her  cousin  would  be  uncomfortably 
restive  under  the  infliction  of  the  extra  couple.  Before 
long  she  was  resenting  his  too  amiable  acceptance  of  the 
addition  to  the  party.  They  drove  down  to  the  river  in  the 
Balls'  carryall,  Harry  and  Val  in  front  with  the  basket, 
Mrs.  Ball  and  Ethan  behind.  Gano  was  laughing  and  talk 
ing  with  an  unusually  gracious  air.  Was  Val  to  believe  that 
under  that  charming  exterior  he  was  burning  with  the  dull 
rage  that  kept  her  silent  and  distraite?  His  unwonted 
gayety  looked  suspiciously  like  relief. 

When  they  got  down  to  the  landing  it  was  found  that 
Ethan  had  already  provided  the  boat  and  the  hamper.  But 
Val  told  herself  that  was  not  the  reason  that  he,  as  it  were, 
took  command  of  the  little  expedition.  He  would  always  do 
that.  Other  people  found  it  as  natural  as  he  did  himself. 
Mrs.  Ball  was  to  sit  in  the  stern,  "and,  Val.,  you  take  the 
tiller."  When  they  had  pulled  a  few  yards  up-stream  Ethan 
shipped  his  oars,  stood  up,  and  slipped  off  his  white  flan 
nel  coat  and  waistcoat. 

"Will  you  keep  my  watch  ?" 

Val  nodded.  How  warm  it  felt  !  She  put  it  in  her 
bosom.  No  movement  of  her  cousin's  was  lost  upon  the 
girl,  though  her  eyes  never  rested  on  him.  There  had 
sprung  up  between  them  again  that  old,  alert  physical  con 
sciousness  that  is  like  a  sixth  sense. 

That  the  genial,  broad-chested  Wilbur  should  appear  to 
advantage  out-of-doors  was  a  matter  of  course.  Val  had 
told  him  once  that  he  was  like  a  great  Newfoundland  dog 
--'too  big  for  the  house/'  But  the  impression  made  by 
Gano's  skill  in  open-air  pursuits  was  partly  due  to  a  sense 
of  surprise  on  the  part  of  the  on -lookers  that  this  fine- 
limbed,  small-handed,  slender-footed  creature  should  be  as 
strong,,  apparently,  as  the  obvious  athlete. 

Mrs.  Bali  talked  incessantly  about  people  in  society — 
about  her  plan  for  "going  to  Europe  "  when  Austin  should 

402 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

have  a  holiday  ;  about  any  and  every  thing  she  poured  out 
an  unfaltering  stream. 

During  luncheon  Val,  in  sheer  desperation,  began  to 
show  some  consciousness  of  Harry  Wilbur's  existence. 
Finding  that  Ethan  seemed  not  to  notice,  she  redoubled 
her  friendliness  and  gayety.  At  last,  "  Let's  go  for  a  walk 
—you  and  me,"  she  said,  jumping  up  and  going  towards 
the  dogwood  thicket. 

Harry,  nothing  loath,  strode  after  her.  Mrs.  Ball  felt 
herself  a  diplomatist,  and  began  to  relax  under  Mr.  Gano's 
unruffled  courtesy.  The  little  match-maker  did  not  know 
that  Val's  high  spirits  went  down  like  foam  in  a  champagne- 
glass  as  soon  as  she  was  beyond  the  reach  of  her  cousin's  eyes. 
But  she  came  back  smiling  and  trailing  great  branches  of 
white  dogwood  over  her  shoulder  and  down  her  sky-blue 
gown.  She  felt  it  must  be  pretty,  but  she  got  no  as 
surance  that  Ethan  caught  the  effect.  Harry's  ingenuous 
compliments  only  heightened  her  hidden  wretchedness. 
The  day  was  a  dreary  disappointment  to  the  girl.  Ethan's 
apparent  satisfaction  in  it  was  the  most  disturbing  element 
of  all.  Only  once  did  she  have  a  word  with  him  alone,  and 
then  not  by  his  arrangement.  She  left  Mrs.  Ball  and 
Harry  repacking  their  basket,  of  which  almost  nothing  had 
been  used,  and  ran  down  the  bank  to  help  Ethan  to  put  the 
cushions  back  in  the  boat. 

"  I  suppose  Julia  told  you  her  father  was  coming  up 
to-morrow  night  ?" 

"  No.     What  for  ?" 

"He's  chairman  of  our  committee/' 

"  Don't  say  anything  about  my  being  here." 

"  Really  ?" 

"Really." 

"  All  right.     I  wish  he  weren't  coming,  though." 

ee  Why  ?"  said  the  girl,  preparing  to  hear  her  own  views 
set  forth. 

"  Well,  you  see,  the  trouble  is,  old  Otway  is  getting  very 
deaf  ;  he's  not  really  fit  for  public  business  any  more,  and 
nobody  has  the  courage  to  tell  him.  Isn't  it  appalling  the 

403 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

way  people  cling  to  things — to  the  things,  too,  that  we're 
;il I  forewarned  will  be  taken  from  ns  if  we  stay  here  long 
enough  ?" 

She  looked  at  him  with  a  fresh  sense  of  curiosity  and 
wonderment.  What  a  strange  new  note  he  put  into  life  ! 
Yet  those  others  laughed  and  jested  with  him,  and  thought 
him  one  of  themselves. 

He  took  off  his  jacket  again. 

"  I'll  take  care  of  that."  She  began  to  fold  it.  "  What's 
in  the  pocket  ?"  She  put  her  hand  in  with  a  thrill  of  joy 
at  her  audacity,  and  brought  out  an  old  duodecimo  of  bat 
tered  calf-skin.  "  Why,  I  remember  this  :  it's  one  of  those 
little  volumes  that  you  brought  from  Paris." 

"  Did  I  have  it  with  me— 

"  Yes.  Have  you  gone  on  carrying  it  about  ever  since 
you  first  came  to  the  Fort  ?" 

"  I  hadn't  seen  it  for  years  till  the  other  day.  I  can't 
think  how  it  got  among  my  things." 

"  You've  marked  it  up  frightfully.  Grandma  would 
scold  you  if  she  saw  that." 

"  The  book  marked  me,  why  shouldn't  I  mark  the  book  ?" 

"  What  does  it  say  here  ?" 

He  shook  his  head. 

"  Please  tell  me." 

"I  thought  you  had  studied  Latin." 

"  Y— yes  ;  I  know  what  the  words  mean,  but  I  don't 
know  what  the  sentences  mean.  Do  translate  this  little 
bit," 

"  Nonsense  !    I  might  as  well  have  it  in  English  at  once." 

"  You  don't  like  people  to  know  what  you  read  ?" 

"  I  don't  like  people  to  read  what  I  mark." 

"Why  not?" 

"  It's  like  leaving  your  diary  open.    Why  should  people— 

"I'm  not  ' people.'  Mayn't  I  know  this  tiny  bit? — 
1  Meditare  utrtim  commodius  sit,  vel  mortem  transire  ad 
nos  vel  nos  ad  earn.'  What's  that  ?" 

Ethan  only  smiled. 

"  You  never  gave  me  back  my  watch." 

404 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 


.  > 


I  forgot.  No  ;  I  can't  think  why  I  tell  such  lies.  I 
didn't  forget  at  all.  Oh,  here  comes  Mrs.  Ball/' she  said, 
with  an  accent  of  despair,  "and  we've  not  said  a  word 
about — " 

"  Bother  Mrs.  Ball !"  Ethan  ejaculated  under  his  breath  ; 
and  his  cousin  blessed  him. 

Val's  hostess  hurried  down  the  bank,  and  Ethan  handed 
her  into  the  boat.  Harry  was  left  to  cope  with  the  basket. 

"  Now,  what  are  you  two  arranging  for  to-morrow?" 
said  the  lady,  settling  herself  in  the  boat. 

"  We  weren't  arranging,"  replied  Val ;  "we  were  speak 
ing  about  a  book." 

She  had  put  the  volume  back  in  the  pocket  of  Ethan's 
jacket. 

"  There's  a  dance  at  the  O'Connors'  to-morrow  night/' 
said  Mrs.  Ball ;  "perhaps  you'd  like  to  come  with  us." 

She  saw  herself  entering  011  Mr.  Gano's  arm. 

"  Ah,  thanks  ;  you're  very  kind,  but  I  don't  go  to  dances 
these  days." 

Mrs.  Ball  tried  to  think  she  was  relieved  on  Val's  ac 
count,  but  she  couldn't  help  saying,  with  an  air  : 

"  The  O'Connors  are  among  the  first  people  here  ;  they 
entertain  in  the  most  princely  way." 

"  7  was  suggesting  a  day's  fishing  down  by  the  Gray 
Pool,"  said  Harry,  appearing  with  the  basket ;  "  it's  that 
place  on  the  Little  Choctaw  River." 

"  Nothing  could  be  better,"  Ethan  agreed. 

And  then  he  stopped,  having  caught  Val's  unenthu- 
siastic  glance.  Another  day  to  be  lived  through,  cooped 
up  in  a  boat,  she  was  thinking ;  or  pursued,  at  all  events, 
by  two  superfluous  people. 

"  Yes,"  said  Mrs.  Ball,  "  the  scenery  on  the  Little 
Choctaw  is  very  wild  and  splendid.  A  cousin  of  mine — 
you  know,  Harry,  cousin  Bettie  MacFadden — she  says  it's 
just  like  some  place  abroad — in  Scotland,  I  think." 

"Oh,  really,"  said  Ethan,  in  his  charming  way,  "I  must 
see  that,  but  we  might  go  fishing  on  a  dull  day.  If  it's  as 
fine  as  this  to-morrow, why  not —  Don't  I  remember"— 

405 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

he  turned  to  Mrs.  Ball — "that  you're  a  very  good  horse 
woman  ?" 

"Oh— er— well— " 

"  They  were  telling  me  at  the  hotel  you  have  a  ride  here 
abouts  out  to  some  wild  park." 

"Yes  ;  he  means  Forest  Park  Lodge/'  said  Wilbur. 

"Let  us  go  there,"  said  Ethan,  "and  I'll  wire  them  to 
have  luncheon  ready." 

It  was  all  arranged  before  they  parted,  Mrs.  Ball  salving 
any  prick  of  conscience  by  assuring  herself  it  was  far  better 
not  to  seem  afraid  of  this  masterful  Mr.  Gano,  with  his 
reputation  for  being  dangerous.  It  was  right,  and  even 
politic,  not  to  "leave  him  out."  All  that  was  necessary 
was  that  she,  Mrs.  Ball,  should  "be  there." 

"I  don't  ask  you  to  come  back  with  us  to-night,"  she 
said,  on  their  return  to  town.  "  We  have  time  only  to 
snatch  a  mouthful  before  going  to  a  concert." 

Mrs.  Ball  had  a  sense  of  playing  up  with  grace  and  dis 
tinction  to  some  imaginary  standard  of  life  abroad.  "  He 
will  find  me  much  more  like  the  ladies  he  knows  in  London 
and  Paris  than  most  people  about  here." 

Val  had  told  herself  that  Ethan  had  invented  the  ride 
so  that  they  should  be  freer  ;  they  would  get  ahead  of  the 
others,  or  fall  behind,  and  have  some  time  to  themselves. 
But  Mrs.  Ball  started  off  next  morning  with  Mr.  Gano,  and 
ruthlessly  rode  beside  him  all  the  way.  Val  alternately 
raged  in  her  heart,  and  forgot  how  sore  it  was,  watching 
one  of  those  two  on  in  front.  How  well  he  sat  his  horse  ! 
But  so  did  Harry.  What  was  it  in  Ethan  that  distinguished 
him  so  from  other  men,  and  set  him  for  ever  apart  ?  She 
tried  to  give  it  a  name  while  Harry's  small-talk  trickled 
vaguely  through  her  brain. 

They  stopped  to  lunch,  and  put  up  the  horses  at  the 
Forest  Park  Lodge. 

While  they  were  dismounting,  a  buggy  dashed  up  with  a 
man  and  a  girl  in  it.  The  miserable  old  mare  had  been 
driven  to  death,  and  was  covered  with  sweat  and  foam. 

400 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  Brute  I"  said  Ethan  under  his  breath,  glowering  at  the 
man,  who  threw  the  reins  round  the  whip,  and  helped  his 
companion  out. 

"  Pretty  sort  of  girl  to  let  him  drive  like  that/'  was  Val's 
comment,  as  the  couple  went  towards  the  hotel. 

"  Never  saw  so  much  of  a  beast's  ribs  before  without  the 
trouble  of  taking  off  his  skin/'  said  Wilbur. 

"My  goodness  !"  added  Mrs.  Ball,  "that's  not  a  horse  ; 
it's  a  plate-rack." 

"Look  here/'  said  Ethan  to  the  man  who  was  leading 
their  horses  to  the  stables,  "you're  going  to  rub  this  other 
beast  down,  I  suppose,  and— 

"'Never  have  no  sich  orders  from  Mr.  Joicey,"  said  the 
man.  "  That's  Joicey."  He  jerked  his  thumb  after  the 
two  figures.  "  Comes  here  a  lot.  Mare  looks  wuss'n  she 
is.  D'ye  know  that  there  nag  is  Blue  Grass  ?" 

"Not  the  filly  that  won— 

"Yes,  siree  bob;  won  a  pile  fur  Joicey's  father.  Goes 
like  hell  even  yet." 

"  Give  her  a  rub  down  and  a  feed,  and  say  nothing  about 
it,"  said  Gano,  transferring  something  from  his  pocket  to 
the  man's  hand.  "For  the  sake  of  battles  long  ago,"  he 
added  to  his  companions,  seeming  to  apologize. 

As  they  walked  up  to  the  hotel  Mrs.  Ball  ran  on  volubly 
about  the  ill-treatment  of  animals. 

"I  like  to  remember  some  magnificent  thoroughbreds  I 
saw  the  last  time  I  was  in  Holland,"  Ethan,  said  in  the  first 
pause.  "I  fell  in  with  their  owner  afterwards,  a  certain 
Monsieur  Oscar." 

"That  the  fellow  that  trains  horses  ?"  asked  Wilbur. 

"Yes,  founder  of  the  Continental  Cirque.  He'd  been 
all  over  the  world,  and  was  giving  his  last  performance 
while  I  was  at  Scheveningen.  When  I  came  across  him 
afterwards,  he  had  sold  all  the  animals  and  properties  of 
his  great  show.  '  All/  he  said,  '  except  my  eight  favorite 
horses.'  I  asked  if  he  was  going  to  keep  them.  'No/  he 
said ;  '  I  shot  them  after  my  last  performance.  I  might 
have  sold  tfiem  well,  but  I  thought  perhaps  they  might 

407 


TIIK    OPEN    QUESTION 

come  down  in  the  world,  and  end  by  going  between  shafts. 
No,  I  cared  about  'em,  so  I  shot  'cm." 

"Oh,  how  could  he  have  the  heart!"  Mrs.  Ball  was 
shocked. 

"  You  should  have  seen  the  fellow's  face  !  He  had  cared. 
I  couldn't  help  thinking  what  a  lot  of  room  there  was  in  the 
world  for  that  kind  of  caring." 

"Gracious  no,  it's  too  brutal!  He  should  have  given 
them  to  people  who  would  appreciate  them.'" 

"As  Mr.  Joicey  does  Blue  Grass?  You've  heard  of 
General  Boulanger's  celebrated  black  charger — he's  a  cab- 
horse  now  in  Paris.  Marshal  Canrobert's  splendid  animal 
is  in  the  Pasteur  Institute  at  Garches,  where  it  is  used  for 
the  production  of  serum.  Saint-Claude,  too,  the  winner  of 
the  Grand  Steeplechase  at  Autcuil  in  '90,  he's  there  being 
experimented  upon.  No,  dear  Mrs.  Ball,  there  seems  to  be 
just  one  safe  asylum  for  horses  as  for  men.  Hello,  there  ! 
did  you  get  my  telegram  ?"  he  called  out  briskly  to  the  ho 
tel-keeper.  "  Gano — luncheon  for  four." 

In  a  moment  he  seemed  to  have  the  entire  statT  of  the 
place  bustling  about  him,  waiters  throwing  open  the  win 
dows  at  his  complaint  of  closeness,  putting  fresh  flowers  on 
the  table  laid  for  the  partie  carree,  deaf  to  the  appeals  of 
the  few  other  people  in  the  big  dining-room,  the  landlord 
praying  Mr.  Gano  to  remember  that  he  was  nearly  half  an 
hour  before  the  time. 

"Do  they  know  him  ?"  Mrs.  Ball  whispered  to  Wilbur. 

"Must ;  or  why  should  they  take  all  this  trouble  ?" 

Val  smiled  to  herself,  believing  it  superfluous  to  dive  into 
her  cousin's  pocket  for  the  reason;  it  was  there  in  his  face, 
in  his  air.  It  was  so.  she  told  herself,  that  princes  walked 
the  world,  barriers  going  down  before  them,  and  people  vy 
ing  to  do  them  unasked  service.  Yes,  it  was  not  for  noth 
ing  she  had  dreamed  about  the  prince. 

The  luncheon  was  a  distinct  success.  It  soon  became 
evident  that  Ethan  was  making  great  headway  with  Mrs. 
Ball.  Her  vivacity,  and  his  unwonted  responsiveness,  had 
kept  the  ball  rolling  merrily.  Was  he  making  himself  so 

'-ins 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

agreeable,  Val  began  to  wonder,  that  he  might  be  surer  of 
a  welcome  in  West  Walnut  Street  ?  "Jessie  Ball  is  bent 
on  impressing  Ethan/'  thought  the  pitiless  young  observer. 
"  She's  growing  quite  affected";  and  she  watched  her  hos 
tess  coldly.  It  seemed  to  Val  a  part  of  Mrs.  Ball's  desire 
to  play  up  to  some  imagined  standard  of  extra  punctilio 
that  led  her,  towards  the  end  of  the  meal,  to  pass  her  purse 
to  Harry  under  the  table,  while  Ethan  wasn't  looking, 
forming  with  her  lips  the  words  "  I'm  hostess."  Val's  sense 
of  embarrassment  was  acute.  Ethan  wouldn't  like  it,  after 
ordering  things  himself.  Val  knew,  too,  that  if  her  cousin 
had  not  been  a  rich  man,  Mrs.  Ball's  breeding  would  have 
appeared  better.  She  would  not  have  troubled  about  the  bill. 

Ethan's  later  amazement  when  he  called  for  the  account, 
that  there  should  be  a  discussion  as  to  who  should  pay  for 
the  repast  he  had  ordered,  made  Val  want  to  get  under  the 
table.  By  so  much  was  she  relieved  at  his  giving  way  be 
fore  Mrs.  Ball's  shrill  insistence. 

"  Oh,  very  well,  if  it  pleases  you  better  so."  He  jumped 
up  to  cut  the  discussion  short.  "  Send  it  out  after  us.  And 
when  will  you  have  the  horses — in  half  an  hour  ?" 

Mrs.  Ball  was  uncomfortably  conscious  that  her  fine 
straw-colored  hair  had  come  out  of  curl  in  the  wind,  there, 
under  the  trees.  With  the  indomitable  spirit  of  woman  in 
pursuit  of  beauty,  she  was  determined  to  borrow  the  cham 
bermaid's  tongs,  and  restore  the  fuzziness  with  which  she 
had  started  forth.  It  was  essential,  therefore,  that  she 
should  take  time  as  well  as  herself  by  the  forelock.  She 
hurried  Val  up-stairs. 

"  What  a  fascinating  man  !"  she  said,  with  a  sigh,  as  she 
stood  before  the  glass.  "Val,  dear,  I  hope  you  won't  lose 
your  heart  to  Mr.  Gano." 

"  Oh,  I've  got  past  that,"  said  the  girl,  with  a  misleading 
air  of  frankness. 

"Well,  I'm  relieved  to  hear  you  say  so.  There's  some 
thing  about  him  very  magnetic  to  my  way  of  thinking — 
positively  irresistible."  She  sighed  again.  "But  he'd 
make  a  shocking  bad  husband,  that's  one  comfort." 

409 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"Comfort!"     Val  laughed  a  little  hysterically. 

' '  Well,  now,  what  have  I  said  ?" 

But  Val  was  hatted  and  gloved,  and  ran  down-stairs. 
Ethan  was  smoking  in  the  porch. 

"Where  are  those  funny  friends  of  yours  ?"  he  said. 

She  was  up  in  arms  at  once. 

"You  always  say  my  friends  are  funny." 

"And  so  they  are,  dear  child.'' 

"  They're  not  a  bit  funnier  than  my  relations." 

"Oh,  they  don't  compare." 

"  How  long  before  the  horses  will  be  ready  ?"  said  Val, 
loftily,  as  one  who  chafes  at  a  delay,  making  meanwhile  a 
rapid  calculation  as  to  how  long  Mrs.  Ball's  work  of  restor 
ation  might  bo  counted  on  to  keep  her  up-stairs. 

"They'll  be  here  presently,"  said  Ethan,  throwing  away 
his  cigarette. 

"Let's  go  and  see."  Val  led  the  way  round  to  the  back 
of  the  hotel.  "  My  friends  are  perfectly  delightful,  but  I 
don't  mean  to  let  them  monopolize  every  minute  of  our 
time." 

He  looked  at  her  with  an  odd  expression,  and  then  turn 
ed  away  his  face.  Her  heart  gave  a  great  leap.  They  went 
on  to  the  stable.  Wilbur  was  there.  The  buckle  on  Gano's 
saddle-girth,  he  said,  had  got  bent.  While  it  was  being 
taken  off  Ethan  moved  about,  looking  in  sheds  and  open 
doors. 

"  What  are  you  hunting  for  ?"  Val  called  after  him. 

"A  place  for  you  to  sit  down.  They'll  be  some  minutes 
repairing  that  thing." 

"You'd  better  go  back  to  the  house,"  said  Wilbur,  who 
was  showing  the  man  how  to  get  the  metal  straight  without 
breaking  the  tongue  of  the  buckle. 

"No,"  said  Val ;  "I  shall  go  in  there,  and  up  those  cob 
webby  stairs,  and  sit  on  the  hay  by  the  door  that  opens 
into  mid -air." 

As  she  walked  towards  the  barn-door  it  seemed  to  her 
that  her  whole  existence  depended  upon  whether  Ethan 
followed  her. 

410 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

At  the  door  she  turned,  and  saw  him  looking  after  her. 
Then  she  went  in.  Was  he  coming  ?  oh,  was  he,  was  he  ? 
She  began  to  mount  the  stair,  but  her  heart  seemed  to 
stay  down  there  on  the  bottom  step.  She  wouldn't  look 
back  again,  but  there  was  no  sound,  no  sign.  It  was  not 
overwhelmingly  important  to  him  to  see  her  alone.  She 
felt  the  hot  tears  stinging  her  eyes.  Then  the  sunshine 
that  streamed  into  the  musty  place  through  the  open  half 
of  the  double  door — suddenly  it  was  darkened.  She  knew 
it  was  Ethan  on  the  threshold.  He  came  after  her  up  the 
narrow  seed-strewn  stair,  that  had  no  banister. 

"  Don't  walk  so  near  the  edge/'  he  said,  and  he  came  on 
the  outside,  pushing  her  a  little  towards  the  inner  wall. 

They  went  up  side  by  side,  the  girl  quite  silenced  by  the 
sense  of  his  nearness.  She  half  held  her  breath,  expecting 
every  second  he  would  say  something — something  that  for 
her  would  be  momentous.  When  they  had  reached  the  loft, 
and  he  had  not  opened  his  lips,  a  disappointment  swept 
over  her t so  acute  it  was  almost  humiliation.  She  waded 
heavily  through  the  hay  to  the  open  door,  that  looked  out 
on  the  horses  and  the  group  below. 

"I  can't  think  what  I  am  to  say  about  this  visit,  when  I 
get  home/'  she  said.  "It  seems  as  impossible  to  tell  them 
I've  been  seeing  you  as  it  does  not  to  say  so." 

"When  must  you  go  ?" 

He  accepted  it,  then.  No  crying  out  against  her  going, 
but  merely  "  when."  She  turned  away  from  the  open  door, 
where  she  could  see  Mrs.  Ball  just  arrived  on  the  scene 
making  her  a  sign,  and  she  steadied  herself  an  instant  with 
her  hand  against  the  wall  in  the  shadow.  The  close  smell 
of  the  hay  choked  her.  Was  it  like  this  people  felt  before 
fainting  ?  "  Oh,  why  did  I  come  ?"  she  heard  herself  say 
ing.  And  then,  instead  of  losing  consciousness,  an  electric 
sense  of  life  and  joy  spread  through  all  her  body.  Ethan's 
fingers  had  closed  about  her  hand  that  had  hung  so  limp  at 
her  side.  There  must  have  been  some  virtue  in  him,  for  at 
the  touch  she  was  whole  again. 

"  Don't  be  sorry  you  came,"  he  said. 

411 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"Mustn't  I?" 

She  tried  to  subdue  her  gladness. 

"  Xo  ;  even  though  parting  is  more  than  I  have  courage 
to  face.'*' 

She  waited  an  instant  for  what  was  to  follow,  and  then, 
"  What  ?  I — I  didn't  hear  what  you  said." 

"  But  there  are  some  things,"  he  went  on,  "that  we  must 
do  without  courage." 

"Ethan"  —  she  turned  and  faced  him  with  a  kind  of 
fierceness  like  a  creature  at  bay — ''if  you  find  you  can  do 
that,  it  will  be  because  you  don't  care  much." 

" Don't  care!" — his  face  came  closer,  his  voice  was  so 
shaken  out  of  its  even  cadences  it  sounded  like  a  stranger's 
—"don't  care!  Do  you  know  that  I  never  in  all  my  life 
knew  what  caring  meant  till  I  knew  you  ?  Do  you  know 
that  I'd  give  everything  I  have  on  earth,  and  every  other 
hope  of  happiness,  just  to  be  able  to  believe  there  is  no 
barrier  between  you  and  me  ?" 

He  stopped.  Val's  heart  was  too  full  to  speak  on  the 
instant.  In  the  silence  Wilbur's  voice  rang  out  clear  at  the 
bottom  of  the  stairs  : 

"I  say,  Val,  aren't  you  ever  coming  ?" 

Mrs.  Ball  asked  Ethan  to  come  in  after  their  ride  and 
have  a  cup  of  tea.  He  thanked  her,  and  seemed  to  accept. 
They  all  went  into  the  dim  parlor,  and  when  Mrs.  Ball  had 
drawn  up  the  blinds  old  Mr.  Ball  was  discovered  asleep  in 
the  arm-chair.  lie  woke  at  the  noise,  and  blinked  feebly. 

"Why,  paw,"  said  Mrs.  Ball,  "how  did  you  get  in 
here  ?" 

The  old  man  grunted. 

"You've  dropped  your  knitting,"  said  Val.  stooping 
and  picking  up  a  strip  of  gray  wool  -  work  with  needles 
sticking  in  it. 

He  took  it,  and  began  feebly  moving  his  rheumatic 
hands,  while  Mrs.  Ball  bustled  about  making  the  tea  and 
sending  the  maid-servant  in  and  out.  Ethan  turned  his 
back,  and  looked  out  of  the  window.  Val  suddenly  felt 

412 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

the  repulsiveness  of  the  old  man  as  she  had  never  felt  it 
before.     She  saw  that  Ethan  had  taken  out  his  watch. 

'•'It  isn't  possible  it's  nearly  five  o'clock!"  he  said,  as 
though  that  were  an  unheard-of  hour  for  tea.  "  I'm  sorry, 
but  I  must  get  back  to  my  hotel/'  and  almost  before  Mrs. 
Ball  knew  where  she  was,  he  had  shaken  hands  and  was 
gone. 


CHAPTER  XXIX 

"  GRANDMA  is  not  so  well  to-day/'  said  Emmie's  letter 
the  next  morning.  "I  think  you  oughtn't  to  be  away 
long.  She  is  surprised  to  have  only  a  '  safe  arrival '  tele 
gram  from  you  and  no  letter.  She  says  she  doesn't  count 
the  post-card.  But  she  does,  and  I  think  you'd  better  not 
send  her  another." 

Val  read  it  out  at  breakfast. 

"Well,  you  just  write  and  tell  them  I'm  giving  a  Pink 
Luncheon  for  you  to-morrow,  and  that  there  are  two  more 
dances  next  week.  You  can't  possibly  go  till  a  week  from 
Saturday." 

"  But  perhaps,  if  grandma  really  isn't  so  well,  I  oughtn't 
to  stay  quite  so  long." 

"My  dear  girl,  she's  been  'not  so  well'  since  before  I 
was  born." 

The  Pink  Luncheon  was  a  huge  success.  The  fame  of 
its  pinkness— of  Mrs.  Ball's  "perfectly  fascinating"  visitor, 
and  that  visitor's  perfectly  adorable  cousin,  Mr.  Gano— were 
long  discussed  among  Mrs.  Ball's  "first  people."  The  un 
grateful  guest  alone  was  not  content. 

"Miss  White  has  just  asked  Will  Austin,"  Harry  whis 
pered  to  her  as  they  were  leaving  the  table,  "if  I'm  the 
man  you're  going  to  marry." 

His  laughing  eyes  left  her  in  no  doubt  as  to  the  audacious 
answer  he  had  given.  She  glanced  across  at  Ethan.  He 
was  lingering  a  moment  with  his  neighbor,  Baby  Whittaker, 
while  they  ate  a  philopena,  smiling  and  talking  for  all  the 
world  as  if—  But,  after  all,  what  did  it  matter  ?  Since  the 
moment  when  Ethan  had  said  that  about  his  "caring," 


414 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

she  had  lived  in  a  cloudy  rapture.  Nothing  but  a  blessed 
happiness  was  clearly  denned,  not  even  the  wish  to  define. 
For  a  time  Ethan's  confession  was  all-sufficient.  She  had 
borne  with  his  absence  and  his  engagements  with  Mr.  Ot- 
way,  as  she  bore  now  with  his  polite  pretence  that  Miss 
Whittaker  really  existed.  Val  endured  the  inconclusive 
hours  with  a  patience  that  would  have  been  more  surpris 
ing  had  it  been  patience  at  all,  and  not  sheer  absorption  in 
the  unreasoning  joy  of  living  over  that  moment,  which  she 
felt  had  justified  her  coming,  even  if  it  presaged  no  easy  issue. 
She  had  determined  to  stay  at  least  a  week  longer.  A  week 
was  a  lifetime  ;  a  thousand  things  could  happen  in  a  week. 

Dimly  in  the  background  of  her  mind  she  was  feeling 
her  way  to  a  conclusion  that,  if  all  else  failed,  should  be 
yond  peradventure  break  down  this  nightmare  barrier.  But 
she  did  not  even  subconsciously  face  the  extremity. 

They  had  all  been  going  to  ride  out  to  Miss  Baby  Whit- 
taker's  in  the  afternoon. 

Val  was  no  friend  to  the  plan,  but  too  much  had  been 
said  of  Baby  Whittaker's  conquest  of  Ethan  the  day  before 
at  the  Pink  Luncheon  for  her  to  venture  an  objection. 
When  the  discreet  Saturday  brought  with  it  floods  of  rain,, 
Val's  heart  went  out  in  gratitude. 

During  the  little  lull  in  the  downpour,  about  two  o'clock, 
Ethan  had  ridden  over,  whereupon  the  Ball  household 
smiled  covertly  at  his  eagerness  to  go  to  Baby  Whittaker's. 
But  it  was  no  use,  the  roads  were  already  very  bad,  and 
down  came  the  torrent  again.  It  was  just  as  well,  per 
haps,  as  Mrs.  Ball  wouldn't,  in  any  case,  be  able  to  go. 
Old  father  Ball  had  had  a  seizure  of  some  sort  in  the 
morning,  and  Mrs.  Ball  hung  over  him  solicitously,  fear 
ing  another. 

Val's  chief  concern  was  lest,  when  Ethan  saw  the  dropped 
jaw  and  leaden  eyes,  he  should  turn  and  flee.  "  Why  did 
they  keep  their  old  and  sick  in  the  parlor  ?"  thought  the 
girl,  angrily. 

Suddenly  Mrs.  Ball  gave  a  scream.  "  Harry,  help  me  to 
take  him  into  his  room  !" 

415 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

He  was  struggling.  Ethan  went  forward,  and  he  and 
Harry  carried  the  old  man  out. 

' '  Is  he  dead  ?"  asked  the  girl,  when  Ethan  came  back. 

"No,  he's  not  in  luck  this  time,  I'm  afraid.  I've  lent 
Harry  my  horse  to  go  for  the  doctor.  The  doctor!"  He 
gave  a  little  dry  laugh. 

They  stood  at  the  window,  looking  out. 

Surreptitiously  she  glanced  at  him. 

"Oh,  you  wouldn't  look  so  grave  if  you  knew  what  I 
know/'  she  thought  to  herself.  "  I  feel  it's  coming  all  right 
for  us.  It  must,  it  must !  But  I  dare  not  say  so  yet ;"  and 
with  her  sense  of  superior  knowledge,  of  being  in  the  coun 
cils  of  the  gods,  her  spirits  rose. 

"  How  can  you  bear  to  be  in  the  house  with  that  awful 
old  man  ?"  Ethan  was  saying. 

"Oh,  he's  not  often  like  this.  Isn't  it  wonderful,"  she 
remarked,  with  recovered  cheerfulness,  "  to  think  he's 
nearly  ninety  ?" 

"  Repulsive.  lie  gave  me  the  horrors  the  first  time  I  saw 
him." 

"I  can't  help  staring  at  him.  He  seems  hardly  hu 
man." 

"He's  not  human.  Only  the  animal  survives.  To 
think  that  we  can  go  on  eating  and  sleeping  so  long  after 
the  heart  and  the  brain  have  burned  themselves  out  !"  He 
moved  away  impatiently,  saying,  half  to  himself:  "How 
perishable  the  best  things  are  !  How  long  the  lower  nature 
lasts  !" 

"Twenty- three  — ninety";  she  did  the  sum.  "Sixty- 
seven  years  more,  perhaps." 

"For  you!"  He  wheeled  round  and  looked  at  her. 
"  Heaven  forbid  !  Upon  my  soul,  if  I  thought  that  you, 
with  all  you  stand  there  for— of  beauty  and  gladness — if  I 
thought  you'd  go  on  living  till  you  were  the  feminine 
counterpart  of  that  old  horror,  1 " — he  choked  with  a  half- 
whimsical  fury— "I  believe  I  could  kill  you  with  my  own 
hands." 

She  came  closer,  smiling. 

410 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"It  would  be  just  like  me  to  go  on  till  Fm  a  hundred, 
if  Fm  riot  stopped." 

"  What  prompts  you  to  say  such  things  to  me  ?"  he  said, 
sharply,  and  turned  again  to  the  window. 

" But  all  the  old  don't  end  like  Mr.  Ball,  /shall  be  a 
lively  old  lady,  if  I'm  not  stopped." 

"  Oh.  nothing  could  stop  you." 

She  laughed. 

"  Don't  be  so  hopeless.  You  see,  I've  studied  the  sub 
ject  of  old  age.  The  reason  it  isn't  more  valued  is  because 
it's  taken  too  modestly.  I  suppose  it's  difficult  not  to  be 
modest  if  you're  ninety.  But  no  old  person  should  be  un 
selfish  or  patient.  That's  fatal.  You  see  the  success  our 
own  grandmother  has  made." 

Without  turning  round,  Ethan  began  to  laugh,  too. 

"  A  woman  must  be  gentle  and  amiable  (if  she  can  man 
age  it)  while  she's  young.  It's  becoming  in  the  young," 
she  said,  piously  ;  then,  with  a  cheerful  gleam,  "  but  all 
old  women  should  be  defiant  —  yes,  they  should  study  a 
dictatorial  style,  and  make  the  young  ones  toe  the  mark. 
It's  the  only  way.  Oh,  I'll  be  an  aged  Tartar,  and,  you'll 
see,  they'll  all  say,  ( A  person  of  remarkable  character  is 
old  Mrs.—'  H'm  !" 

She  stopped  short,  and  he  turned  round  smiling  and 
glowering  at  her,  and  then  back  again  to  the  window. 

"  Oh  !"  she  exclaimed,  looking  over  his  shoulder. 

"What  ?  That  poor  devil  over  there  ?  Yes,  I've  been 
watching  him." 

"I  don't  see —  Oh,  yes,  the  cripple.  Ethan,  Ethan, 
what  is  one  to  do  with  you  !" 

She  dropped  on  the  sofa  with  a  face  of  comic  despair. 

"Do  with  me  ?" 

"  Yes — if  every  time  you  look  out  of  the  window  you  see 
a  '  devil'  of  some  sort." 

He  laughed,  and  then  : 

"  But  you  said  <  Oh  !'  and  I  thought—" 

"  I  said  '  Oh  !'  because  the  rain's  stopped  and  the  sun's 
trying  to  shine.  And  all  you  can  see  is  a  cripple  dragging 
2D  417 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

his  leg  through  the  mud  !  Come  along" — she  jumped  up 
— "  the  rain's  ruined  the  roads,  but  it  hasn't  hurt  the 
river,  and  we'll  go  for  a  row.  It's  going  to  be  beauti 
ful/' 

She  dragged  him  off  without  ceremony. 

As  they  passed  by  the  Wharton  House,  "There's  Ot- 
way,"  said  Ethan,  looking  up  at  a  group  of  men  at  the  en 
trance. 

Mr.  Otway  came  down  the  steps  and  shook  hands. 

"This  is  a  surprise!''  he  said  to  Val.  "Come  in  and 
see  Julia.  She  has  no  idea  you're  here." 

"  Oh,  thank  you,  not  this  evening.  We're  going  on  the 
river,  and  it  gets  dark  so  soon.  I  didn't  know  Julia  was 
coming." 

"Neither  did  I,"  laughed  the  indulgent  father,  "until 
this  morning.  Well,  come  in  to-morrow.  Good-bye  !" 

They  got  a  boat,  and  by  half-past  four  were  speeding  up 
stream  to  Ethan's  steady  stroke. 

"It  '11  be  a  simply  glorious  evening.  We  shall  have  a 
flaming  sunset,  you'll  see  I" 

"  Yes.     The  rain  has  washed  the  world  till  it  shines." 

They  talked  very  little  at  first. 

"I  don't  think  we  ought  to  go  beyond  the  Gray  Pool," 
said  Val,  regretfully. 

"  Where's  that  ?" 

"About  a  mile  on." 

"  Oh,  we  can  get  farther  than  that." 

"Well,  they  don't  know  where  I  am,  you  see,  after  all, 
and  it's  nice  by  the  Gray  Pool,  where  the  trees  bend  down. 
You  could  rest  there." 

"Do  I  look  as  if  I  wanted  to  rest  ?" 

"  Can't  say  you  do." 

"  You've  never  told  me  what  brought  you  here  all  of  a 
sudden." 

"  I  wanted  to  find  out  something." 

"  Well,  have  you  succeeded  ?" 

He  smiled  at  her  in  that  sudden  way  of  his  that  made 
her  heart  contract.  She  couldn't  speak  directly,  but  her 

418 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

silence  seemed  to  her  to  say  too  much.     She  rushed  ner 
vously  for  the  light  veil  of  words. 

"I  was  afraid  my  life  was  growing  poorer  than  I  had 
imagined.  If  you  were  going  out  of  it,  I  knew  I  must  go 
and  find  something  to  fill  up  the  empty  place." 

"Going  out  of  it?"  lie  scrutinized  her  keenly. 
"  Where  should  I  go  ?" 

"Oh,  there  are  so  many  people  and  things  beckoning  to 
you.  How  could  I  tell  ?  I  was  afraid  you'd  gone  into 
some  world  where  I  couldn't  follow — " 

"So  you  came  after  me  ?"  he  smiled  tenderly. 

"  Some  world,"  she  said,  getting  a  little  red,  "  where  you 
didn't  want  me." 

"I  always  want  you — "  he  stopped  short,  drew  his  for 
ward  -bending  figure  up,  and  pulled  hard  at  the  oars. 
"But  as  to  my  world,  you'd  hate  it  if  you  found  yourself 
at  close  quarters  with  it.  I  give  you  the  best  side  of  it  in 
my  letters." 

"  Pve  told  you  I  don't  want  only  the  best." 

"What  do  you  want  ?" 

"All." 

The  brave,  yet  shamefaced  look  left  nothing  doubtful  ; 
but  he  affected  to  think  she  spoke  only  of  letters. 

"If  I  wrote  you  'all,'  I'd  make  a  pessimist  of  you  in  no 
time." 

"Would  it  be  things  about  —  about  other  women  that 
would  make  me — ' 

"Chiefly  about  men  ;  most  of  all,  about  the  things  that 
are  stronger  than  men." 

They  were  silent  a  moment. 

"I  don't  know  how  it  is,"  she  drew  her  hand  across  her 
eyes  ;  "  but  you  give  me  again  the  old  feeling  that  you're 
somehow  a  prisoner — 

"A  prisoner — yes." 

"  And  that  I  must  set  you  free." 

His  dark  eyes  were  misty  for  a  moment.  "  You  couldn't 
do  that  without — " 

"Without?" 

419 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

He  shook  his  head,  turned,  and  glanced  behind  him. 
"Oh,  look  at  the  sun  !*' 

It  was  going  down  in  a  crimson  flood  that  dyed  the  whole 
country-side  a  red  that  was  like  new-spilt  blood.  It  was 
one  of  those  atmospheric  effects  under  which  the  most  con 
tradictory  colors  in  nature  are  subdued  to  a  common  hue. 
One  has  at  such  times  a  sense  of  looking  at  the  landscape 
through  colored  glass.  The  white  and  yellow  farm-houses 
flamed  a  dull  orange.  Their  windows  glowed  like  brass 
reflecting  fire.  The  very  trees  and  grass  were  soaked  in 
the  strong  dye  of  the  sun.  Ethan's  steady  pull  took  them 
swiftly  on,  out  of  sight  of  farms,  into  the  wilder  country. 
Still  the  girl  sat  with  uplifted  face.  Her  love  of  autumn 
and  of  sunsetting  had  been  no  sad  reflective  sentiment,  but 
something  more  than  common — eager,  subtly  exhilarated, 
joyous.  To-day,  stimulated  and  at  the  same  time  balked, 
she  found  in  the  splendor  of  the  hour  a  sharper  sense 
than  ever  of  the  drama  in  life,  the  essential  poetry  in  hu 
man  experience. 

"  I  think  I  must  be  growing  old,''  sbe  said,  with  a  happy 
sigh. 

••  What  are  the  signs  ?" 

"  I'm  beginning  to  notice  the  scenery.  I'm  grateful  to 
the  sun." 

Her  eyes  fell  suddenly  on  the  clean-carved  features  op 
posite  ;  the  dark  bead  and  the  pale  ivory  of  the  face  seemed 
alone  of  all  things  in  the  responsive  world  to  refuse  to 
wear  the  livery  of  light. 

"  Oh,  I  forgot/' she  said,  "you  don't  like  sunsets  any 
more  than  you  like  autumn.  Here's  the  mooring-place." 

He  stopped  his  long,  steady  stroke,  and  paddled  the  boat 
under  the  overhanging  trees. 

"  On  the  contrary,"  he  said,  making  fast,  and  looking 
the  while  through  the  branches  to  the  conflagration  in  the 
west  —  ''on  the  contrary,  I've  changed,  too  —  'growing 
old,'  perhaps,  like  you."  He  smiled  and  sat  down,  his 
eyes  on  the  slow  -  sinking  sun.  "These,  and  scenes  like 
them,  are  the  conditions  that  reconcile  me." 

420 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"Keconcile  !     They  lift-  me  up  so  high  that  I  am  dizzy." 

She  closed  her  eyes  an  instant,  and  then  opened  them 
with  a  fluttering  smile.  They  seemed  to  have  forgotten 
there  had  been  any  thought  of  going  ashore. 

"It  is  so  splendid  and  yet  so  calm, "he  said,  in  a  low  voice. 
"It  sets  me  free  from  the  burden  and  heat  of  the  day." 

"It  doesn't  set  me  free — not  that  I  want  to  be  set  free. 
I  love  the  burden  arid  heat  of  the  day.  But  this — this  sets 
me  thrilling.  It  clutches  me  at  the  heart,  and  makes  my 
breath  taste  sharp,  like  steel,  against  my  tongue.  This  is 
the  wonder-time  of  day." 

"Yes,"  he  said,  dreamily — "yes,  in  a  sense,  it  is  the 
wonder-time.  No  morning  or  high  noon,  anywhere  up  and 
down  the  world,  can  match  this  hour." 

"But  it  makes  you  sad,"  she  said,  resentfully,  as  though 
he  had  spoken  an  ill  thing  of  some  one  dear. 

"NTo,  I'm  not  sad  any  more  ;  I'm  reconciled.  It  is  the 
moment  when  I  can  most  easily  forget  my  own  existence, 
and  feel  melted  into  the  general  life." 

She  turned  away  with  flashing  eyes. 

""Why  are  you  so  angry?"  he  said,  softly,  "or  is  it  the 
sunset  dyes  you  redder  than  it  did  ?" 

"  That  you  can  say  such  things  so  calmly,  and  at  such  a 
moment — with  all  this"  (she  opened  her  arms  as  if  pas 
sionately  to  embrace  the  beauty  of  the  world) — "all  this 
spread  out  before  us,  with  only  you  and  me  to  see  it,  the 
unconscious  world  not  caring  that " — she  snapped  her  quick 
white  fingers  in  the  lazy  air.  "You  sit  there  saying  the 
eyes  that  glory  in  it,  the  hearts  that  ache  at  the  wonder  of 
,  it,  they  are  nothing ;  they  are  here  to  look  on  a  moment, 
suffer,  and  die,  while  the  great  spectacle  goes  on  and  on 
and  on.  Why  did  we  come  here,  then  ?  What's  the  good 
of  it  ?" 

"I'll  never  tell  you." 

"I'd  begin  to  believe  some  of  your  libels  on  life  if  I 
thought  there  wasn't  more  in  it  than  just — " 

"Just?" 

"That  we  are  brought  here  with  all  this  inside  us" — she 

421 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

drew  her  doubled  hand  across  her  breast  like  one  in  pain 
— "all  this,  and  with  the  destiny  of  brutes — cheated  a  lit 
tle  while  with  gladness  while  we're  children— 

"That's  a  superstition,  too.  The  happiness  of  children 
is  more  than  half  an  illusion  of  the  old.  /  remember. 
Others  have  forgotten  ;  that's  the  difference." 

"  Xo,  no  ;  I  remember,  too  !"  The  raised  voice  was  half 
challenge,  half  appeal.  "I  was  happy,  and  I'm  happy  still, 
except  when  you—  She  broke  off  near  the  brink  of  tears. 
"And  I  mean  to  be  happy.  Oh,  it's  a  good,  good  world, 
and  I'm  glad  I'm  here." 

"I'm  glad  you're  here." 

"But  if  you  were  right" — she  looked  out  with  a  vague 
fear  to  the  fading  west — "if  all  this  keen  consciousness  ex 
isted  just  to  be  tortured  a  little  while,  and  then  flung  down 
in  the  dark — if  that  is  all " — the  eager  face  grew  white— 
"then  human  life's  an  outrage." 

Silence  for  a  moment,  and  then  in  a  low  voice  came  the 
words : 

"It  is  an  outrage." 

"  Don't  say  so,  Ethan  ;  I  can't  bear  it." 

"  Oh  yes,  we  can  all  bear  it ;  and  by  so  much  we  ephem 
era  get  back  our  lost  significance,  our  sovereignty." 

She  looked  up. 

"Through  this  strange  fate  of  ours,"  he  said,  "we  ful 
fil  the  end  of  the  world." 

Old  doctrinal  associations  flitted  before  the  phrase,  blur 
ring  for  her  his  pagan  use  of  it. 

"The  end,  the  aim  of  the  universe,  seems  to  be  beauty 
—beauty  so  varied  in  spirit  and  in  form  that  it  often  gets 
strange  names  from  men." 

"Yes,  it  is  all  beautiful,  isn't  it,  Ethan  ?" 

"That  you  can  always  see  it  so,  and  that  even  I  can  see 
it  sometimes,  proves  we  are  not  the  lowest  in  the  scale  of 
life.  That  power  of  finding  Beauty  through  her  disguises 
is  the  best  seal  civilization  sets  on  men." 

"And  so  even  you  believe  we  fulfil  the  end  of  the  world?" 

He  nodded. 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  It's  as  magnificent,  in  its  way,  as  a  mountain  peak,  or 
the  going  down  of  the  sun,  that  puny  men  should  accept 
the  outrage  of  life  and  the  insult  of  death  so  nobly,  with 
so  little  crying  out.  When  one  thinks  of  it" — he  laughed 
harshly — "  the  old  gods  and  heroes  were  pygmies  compared 
with  modern  men.  What  were  their  doings  and  their  des 
tinies  to  the  hopeless,  silent  battle  men  are  waging,  with 
out  God  and  without  hope  in  the  world  ?  The  men  of  to 
day  don't  go  reeling  into  battle,  drunken  with  the  wine  of 
hope,  or  dazed  with  the  fairy  tales  of  faith.  But  they  fight 
none  the  less  well,  knowing  they  go  out  to  die,  and  not 
even  sure  for  what  cause.  It  is  so  they  fulfil  the  end  of 
the  world.  Nothing  in  it  is  mightier  than  the  spirit  of 
man  calmly  confronting  his  fate." 

She  drew  a  quick  breath. 

"You've  put  it  into  words,"  she  said,  "'but  Fve  felt  it." 

He  looked  at  her  with  dull  foreboding.  He  had  expected 
contradiction,  not  acquiescence. 

"  Come,"  he  said,  rising  and  catching  up  the  boat-cush 
ion.  "It's  chilly  here  in  the  boat.  Why  did  we  come 
under  these  wet  trees  ?  Let's  land,  and  go  and  sit  in 
what's  left  of  the  sunset  there." 

"  You're  not  calmly  confronting  your  fate,"  she  said, 
smiling  dimly. 

"  Come."     He  held  out  his  hand. 

She  took  it  and  laid  her  cheek  against  it. 

"I'll  come  with  you,"  she  said,  "into  the  light  or  into 
the  dark." 

"Child,  child,  what  have  I  done  to  you  ?" 

He  dropped  the  cushion  in  the  bottom  of  the  boat.  She 
clung  to  him.  He  wavered,  the  boat  rocked  violently. 

"Be  careful,  it's  deep  here,"  she  said,  and  drew  him 
down  on  the  cushion  at  her  feet. 

"Val" — he  averted  his  face — "you  must  try  to  under 
stand.  The  barrier  between  you  and  me  is  a  real  one.  It's 
not  a  question  of  whether  your  father's  views  were  right  or 
wrong,  but  that  our  imaginations  have  been  infected  by 
them.  I,  at  least,  would  always  be  fearing,  expecting  dis- 

423 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

aster,  and  the  fear  would  bring  the  evil  to  pass.  Or  even 
if  it  didn't,  the  fear  would — would  destroy  us." 

"No,  no!" 

"It's  true.  I  have  no  courage  equal  to  facing  either 
my  family  inheritance,  or  my  own  dread  of  life — in  a  little 
child/'  He  threw  off  her  clinging  hand.  "Think  of  any 
one  feeling  as  I  do  about  life,  thrusting  it  on  another — on 
some  one  1  would  love  as  I  would  love  your —  He  dropped 
his  head  and  covered  his  eyes  with  his  hand. 

"Why  do  you  think  always  of  some  possible  other  per 
son  ?  Why  do  you  never  think  of  me?"  she  cried. 

He  made  a  sudden  movement,  dropping  his  hand  on  the 
gunwale  of  the  boat,  and  looking  straight  into  her  eyes, 
with  something  new  in  the  mobile  face,  something  that  in 
undated,  drowned  her  in  one  hot  flush  of  passion. 

"Oh!"  she  cried,  half  closing  her  eyes,  "do  you  care 
like  that  ?"  and  she  drooped  forward  into  his  open  arms. 

"  Like  this  and  like  this,"  he  said,  kissing  her  fiercely. 
"Oh,  my  love  !  my  love  !  why  have  you  infected  me  ?  Why 
have  you  poured  yourself  into  my  very  blood  ?"  He  had 
taken  her  by  the  shoulders  almost  roughly,  arraigning  her 
with  sombre-burning  eyes.  "You  put  that  face  of  yours 
in  all  my  dreams.  I  go  to  sleep  with  it  on  my  pillow  ;  I 
wake  up,  it  still  is  there.  In  the  blackest  night  I  see  you 
as  I  saw  you  first,  standing  above  the  darkness,  holding  a 
great  light  in  your  hand.  But  the  light  is  not  to  light  my 
way.  Get  you  back  into  your  fortress  as  quickly  as  you 
can."  He  pushed  her  from  him.  "  I  am  the  enemy." 

"' Enemy,'  '  coward' — I've  another  name  for  you,"  she 
said,  trembling ;  "  and  if  I  have  any  light,  it  surely  is  for 
you.  Dear  Ethan,  don't  you  see  ?  Don't  you  see  ?" 

"  See  ?"     The  moody  eyes  were  heavy  with  passion. 

"  It's  all  quite  clear.''  She  sat  before  him  in  the  bottom 
of  the  boat,  with  hands  clasped,  and  a  veiled  exaltation  in 
her  eyes.  "  We  must  make  a  compact.  We  Ganos  are 
honest  people  ;  we'll  play  fair." 

"A  compact  ?" 

"  Yes.  It  will  seem  to  other  people  like  the  common 

424 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

one.  They'll  call  it  marriage.  It  may  be,  we'll  live  a  life 
time  together  without  doing  the  ill  yon  most  dread  doing. 
But  if — if  the  worst  comes  to  the  worst,  we  will  have  had 
one  perfect  year." 

"  What  do  you  mean,  Val  ?"     He  seized  her  wrists. 

"  It's  more  than  every  man  and  woman  gets,"  she  cried. 

"And  then?" 

"Then,  according  to  the  compact,  we  will  go  out  to 
gether  before — before  we've  opened  the  door — to  another." 
With  a  broken  cry  she  flung  herself  on  his  breast. 

"  Hush,  hush,  child  !  this  is  all —  His  eyes  were  full 
of  tears. 

"You'll  see  it  is  the  only  way.  No  one  but  ourselves 
will  pay  for  our  being  glad  a  little  while." 

"  Glad  !  Do  you  think  you  could  be  glad,  poor  child, 
with  such  an  end  forever  before  your  eyes  ?" 

"Hasn't  all  the  world  that  end  in  view?  Aren't  many 
of  us  glad  in  spite  of  all  ?"  She  smiled  up  into  his  face. 
"  But  can't  you  see  that  I'd  rather  be  sad  with  you,  than 
be  glad  with  any  other  ?" 

He  kissed  her,  and  then:  "This  is  nothing  but  mad 
ness —  and  my  work,  too/'  he  added,  bitterly  —  "my 
work." 

She  put  her  ringers  on  his  lips. 

"  You  take  too  much  credit.  It  wasn't  you  who  said, 
'  All  mankind  is  under  a  sentence  of  capital  punishment.' 
It  isn't  as  if  we  could  escape,  you  know." 

The  old  sense  of  all  the  ways  being  barred,  of  being  a 
creature  trapped,  lay  heavy  011  him. 

"Oh,  my  dear,  my  dear  !"  he  said,  with  a  weary  laugh, 
"  we  ought  to  be  less  rational,  or  more  so.  You  think  you 
love  me,  little  girl  ?" 

He  laid  his  hands  about  her  throat,  and  as  he  looked 
into  the  face  his  senses  swam  again.  She  neither  spoke 
nor  moved,  but  the  quick,  bright  scarlet  was  in  her  cheek, 
and  all  her  womanhood  was  in  her  eyes. 

"This  leaping  of  the  importunate  blood,"  he  thought, 
"  all  this  heartache,  because  of  the  will  to  live  of  that  creat- 

425 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

nre  who  is  never  to  be  born  ;  the  spirit  of  the  race,  heed 
less  of  ' compacts/  clamoring  for  reincarnation." 

"If  life's  as  terrible  and  strange  as  you  say/"'  Val  whis 
pered,  drawing  a  little  away,  "and  if  this  life's  all,  why, 
it's  as  clear  as  daylight,  we'd  be  less  than  rational,  we'd  be 
stark  mad,  to  let  our  little  day  of  happiness  go  by.  You 
see" — she  crept  closer  to  him  again  in  the  failing  light, 
half  crying — "it  concerns  only  us.  We'll  live  our  perfect 
day,  and  when  the  evening  comes  we'll  lie  down — 

"In  each  other's  arms,"  he  said,  hiding  his  face  in  her 
loosened  hair,  his  tortured  mind  turning  with  passion  to 
the  image  of  ultimate  peace. 

"Yes."  Sobbing  faintly,  she  drew  away  that  she  might 
see  his  face.  His  voice  had  sounded  strangely.  "This  is 
our  compact,"  she  said,  and  she  kissed  him  on  the  lips. 

"Our  betrothal,"  he  answered,  dreamily,  as  one  who  has 
set  his  lips  to  a  philter. 

"  Betrothal  ?  Yes.  I  didn't  know  what  a  strange  sound 
the  word  had.  We  must  exchange  rings.  Oh,  Fate,  be 
kind  to  us  !"  She  lifted  up  her  face  as  she  drew  oil  the 
ring  she  wore.  "  You  needn't  be  afraid  to  be  kind.  We 
are  honest  people.  We'll  keep  faith.  Ethan,"  she  whis 
pered,  "  they  can't  grudge  us  so  little  as  we  ask." 

"The  powers  that  be  ?" 

She  nodded. 

"  You  said  yourself  that  what  we  ask  is  more  than  many 
men  and  women  find.  A  year  with  you  " — he  gathered  her 
up  to  his  breast — "a  whole  year  of  beautiful  life  and  beau 
tiful  love  without  fear  of  the  long  decline  !  It's  a  dream 
to  draw  the  very  gods  out  of  their  heaven.  Oh,  be  sure 
they'll  be  jealous  of  you  and  me." 

He  kissed  her  again  and  again. 

"  We  mustn't  let  them  be  jealous.     Where's  your  ring  ?" 

He  drew  off  his  signet,  and  took  from  her  the  little  old 
band  set  with  pearls  and  two  small  rubies. 

"  Too  little  for  me,"  he  said,  "  and  too — 

He  smiled  at  the  obvious  femininity  of  the  old  trinket. 

"  It's  not  for  you  to  keep.     We  must  make  a  sacrifice. 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

I'll  give  yours  to  the  Spirit  of  the  Air."  She  threw  the 
signet  as  far  up  into  the  twilight  as  she  could,  and  they 
both  listened.  "  Yours  is  accepted,"  she  said,  triumphant 
ly.  "  You  must  give  mine  to  the  Water." 

f<  Aren't  you  afraid  the  Earth  will  be  jealous  ?" 
He  held  the  ring  over  the  side  of  the  boat. 
"  Oh,  no  ;  the  Earth  is  patient  ;  she  knows  we'll   give 
her  more  than  a  ring.     Why  do  you  wait  ?     The  W^ater- 
spirit  will  be  angry." 

"  You  never  told  me  who  gave  you  this." 
"  It  was  my  grandmother's  engagement  ring." 
"No  ;  was  it  ?     If  this  ring  hadn't  been  given,  neither 
you  nor  I  would  be  in  the  world." 

He  dropped  it  into  the  river.  They  sat  quite  still,  each 
knowing  perfectly  what  new  train  had  been  started  in  the 
other's  mind,  and  neither  wanting  to  unpack  the  heart  with 
words.  A  couple  of  boats  came  up  the  river,  full  of  boys 
and  girls,  laughing  and  singing.  When  they  got  nearly 
opposite  the  pool  their  voices  rang  out  plainly,  complain 
ing  of  the  current,  and  suggesting  turning  back. 

"  What  a  pity  you  asked  me  that  about  the  ring  !"  Val 
whispered. 

(( I'm  not  sure  it  was  a  pity,  dear." 
The  passion  had  gone  out  of  his  voice. 
"  You  like  her  standing  here  between  us  ?" 
"  I  don't  like  to  forget  what  must  be  remembered." 
If  Ethan  were  conscious  that  the  mental  apparition  of 
the  old  woman  with  her  silent,  but  effectual,  "  I  forbid  the 
banns  " — if  he  were  quite  conscious  that  her  coming  brought 
behind  the  dash  of  disillusionment  a  sense,  too,  of  reprieve, 
he  forbore  to  say  as  much.     It  was  enough  that  the  first 
wearer  of  the  sunken  ring  had  made  not  only  the  difference 
to  those  two  of  being  summoned  out  of  the  infinite,  but  the 
difference  of  holding  them  back  from  the  infinite  as  well. 
The  compact  they  had  made  was  null  and  void  as  long  as 
their  common   ancestress   lived.      Her  character  and  in 
fluence  built  high  an  impregnable  barrier  between  her  de 
scendants  and  this   thing   she  would  despise,  and  which 

427 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

they  knew  would   give  her  her  first  taste  of  the  cup  of 
humiliation. 

"  It  cannot  be  while  she  is  in  the  world/'  said  Ethan. 

With  unconscious  cruelty  the  other  answered  : 

"  But  she  is  very,  very  old,  and  we  are  young." 

A  sudden  stifled  cry  rose  apparently  out  of  the  bushes 
and  tall  water-weeds  just  to  their  left.  Ethan  sprang  up. 

"  It's  only  those  boys,"  said  Val,  as  a  chorus  of  confused 
exclamations  came  from  beyond  the  Gray  Pool. 

"No,  it  was  nearer.     Didn't  you  hear  a  splash  ?" 

The  screams  grew  more  distinct. 

"  One  of  'em's  in  the  water,"  he  said.     "Hallo,  there  !" 

He  paddled  out  from  the  overshadowing  tree. 

"  Ethan  !"  Val  held  out  her  hands  in  a  sudden  agony 
of  fear.  "  It's  horribly  deep  here,  and  there's  a  current  ! 
It's  the  most  dangerous  place  on  the  river !" 

"  Yes.  Bad  place  for  a  little  chap.  Where  did  he  go 
down  ?"  he  shouted. 

"It  was  a  lady.     Her  boat's  just  behind  you." 

Ethan  turned,  and  saw  dimly,  a  few  yards  off,  Mr.  Otway 
grasping  the  side  of  a  row-boat,  and  looking  over  into  the 
water  in  a  pitiable  paralysis  of  horror. 

"  Where  ?  where  ?"  Ethan  called,  scanning  the  river  on 
all  sides. 

Something  vague  rose  up  a  few  yards  below  the  boats, 
and  moved  quickly  down  the  current.  Ethan  was  over 
board  in  an  instant,  striking  out  in  the  direction  of  the 
dark  object. 

Val  caught  up  the  oars  and  followed  in  the  boat.  It  was 
all  over  in  a  few  minutes.  Ethan  had  laid  hold  on  the  un 
conscious  girl,  and  swam  with  her  to  the  bank.  Val  rowed 
across,  and  Ethan  and  she,  between  them,  dragged  Julia 
into  the  boat.  The  boys,  who  had  followed,  culled  back  to 
Mr.  Otway  that  the  lady  was  saved. 

When  the  father  got  up  with  them,  Julia  was  reviving. 

"You'd  better  get  into  their  boat,"  said  Ethan  to  Vul  ; 
"  the  old  man's  not  fit  to  go  alone  down-stream,  you  know. 
You  won't  mind  ?" 

428 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  No,"  said  Val ;  "  but  let  us  keep  close  together." 

"  Of  course." 

"She  would  come/'  Mr.  Otway  kept  saying,  helplessly. 
"  I  told  her  my  river  days  were  over.  She  ivould  come.-" 

"  How  did  the  accident  happen  ?"  said  Val,  keeping  eyes 
and  ears  intent  upon  the  boat  just  in  front. 

Ethan  bent  to  the  oar,  looking  back  now  and  then  to  see 
that  Val  was  close.  Julia  lay  motionless,  with  Ethan's 
coat  over  her. 

"We  must  go  as  fast  as  we  can,"  he  called  out.  "  We'll 
be  able  to  get  some  brandy  at  Leigh's  Landing,  and  a 
trap." 

"How  did  it  happen  ?"  Val  repeated. 

"  Oh,  we  started  only  five  minutes  after  you  did,  and 
Julia  rows  so  well  we  could  have  caught  up  with  you.  But 
she  changed  her  mind  or  else  got  tired,  and  when  you  got 
out  of  sight" — he  put  on  his  pince-nez  and  looked  anxious 
ly  after  the  boat  in  front — "when  you  got  out  of  sight,  she 
wanted  to  rest." 

"Where  was  that  ?" 

"  Near  the  Gray  Pool.  She  pulled  the  boat  in  among 
the  rushes.  I  was  tired,  too.  I  think  I  fell  asleep.  First 
thing  I  knew  we  were  out  of  the  rushes,  and  Julia  was 
leaning  out  of  the  far  end  of  the  boat." — ("  I  wonder  how 
much  she  heard  ?"  was  the  thought  that  haunted  Val.)  — 
"  Whether  it  was  my  speaking  suddenly  startled  her,  or 
whether  she  lost  her  balance,  I  don't  know — I  don't  know 
at  all."  And  he  droned  on  about,  "'She  would  come.  I 
said  my  river  days  were  over. " 

They  found,  as  Ethan  prophesied,  dry  clothes  and  warm 
ing  potions  at  Leigh's  Landing,  and  a  farm  wagon  to  take 
them  back  to  town. 

The  two  men  sat  talking  volubly  in  front,  Ethan  driving. 
The  two  girls  occupied  the  back  seat,  in  a  silence  never 
once  broken  till  they  said  "Good-night"  at  the  Wharton 
House. 


CHAPTER  XXX 

"  WELL,  Val,  where  have  you  been  ?" 

"I've  been  boating,  and — 

"  Boating,  after  all  !  And  poor  Harry  so  anxious,  riding 
along  those  awful  roads  to  the  Forest  Park  Lodge." 

"  Why  should  he  do  that  ?     He  might  have  known — 

"  He  knew  there  was  a  very  urgent  telegram  for  you 
here."  Mrs.  Ball  was  deeply  reproachful.  "  We  thought 
it  best  to  open  it." 

Val  snatched  it  up  and  read  : 

"Come  home  at  once. — SARAH  C.  GANG." 

""  Oh,  she's  ill  ;  dying,  perhaps  !  Oh,  God  !  not  dying  !" 
She  leaned  against  the  wall  ;  her  face  frightened  her 
hostess. 

"My  dear,  it  doesn't  say  a  word  about  being  ill." 

"  It's  what  it  means  ;  she  knew  I'd  understand." 

"Don't  take  it  like  that,  Val."  She  put  her  arm  round 
the  girl. 

Val  threw  her  off,  exclaiming  :  "  Oh,  I  must  go  this  mo 
ment.  Can  we  send  Ethan  word  ?  Quick,  quick  !" 

"  I'll  let  him  know  soon  enough,"  returned  the  other, 
fastening  suspicious  eyes  on  the  girl'"s  pitiful  face.  "I  ex 
pect  Harry  back  every  moment.  I'll  help  you  with  your 
packing." 

In  a  dim  way  Val  was  relieved  on  second  thoughts  that 
Ethan  should  not  be  summoned,  lie  and  she  had  been 
plotting  treason.  The  poignant  fear  and  grief  that  swayed 
her  would  wear  an  artificial  air  in  his  presence  after  what 
had  passed. 

The  packing,  Harry's  return,  the  hurried  supper,  all  went 

480 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

as  in  a  nightmare.  Now  she  was  driving  to  the  station, 
now  she  was  saying  good-bye  to  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Ball,  and  to 
Harry.  No,  he  was  coming  with  her  apparently.  Now 
they  were  in  the  train.  Now  they  were  rattling  and  clat 
tering  through  a  tunnel.  She  sat  in  a  corner  with  closed 
eyes,  while  tears  trickled  incessantly  from  under  the  lids. 

"Dear,  dear,  I  love  you,"  she  said  to  herself,  and  her 
lover  was  far  away  from  her  thoughts.  On  the  throne  of 
life  a  bowed  old  woman  seemed  to  sit  alone.  "  Oh,  I'll  be 
better  to  you  after  this,  only  live  and  give  me  a  chance." 
She  drew  her  limp  figure  up  suddenly  and  turned  her  back 
on  Harry's  whispered  solicitude.  A  lightning-like  realiza 
tion  came,  as  she  sat  there,  of  what  the  life  of  this  woman 
had  meant  to  her.  And  it  was  going  —  going — would  be 
gone,  perhaps,  before  Val  got  home.  She  covered  up  her 
face.  She  told  herself  it  was  no  common  relation  that  she 
bore  to  the  ancient  chatelaine  of  the  Fort.  Something 
deeper  than  the  blood  tie,  a  thing  wrought  out  of  sheer 
personal  force,  hammered  out  of  antagonisms,  welded  with 
fear  and  with  love,  and  binding,  abiding  gratitude  for  a 
glimpse  of  the  unconquerable  mind. 

She  saw  now  that  if  life  from  the  beginning  had  never 
worn  that  cheap  and  shabby  air  that  it  did  to  many  girls 
without  wealth  or  family  distinction  ;  if,  from  the  begin 
ning,  and  day  by  day  to  the  end,  life  had  carried  itself 
bravely  in  the  tumble-down  old  home  ;  if  in  the  leanest 
years  it  had  never  lacked  dignity,  nor  ever  lost  its  faint 
old  -  world  fragrance ;  Val  knew  who  it  was  who  had 
wrought  the  spell,  and  who  had  maintained  it  against  all 
comers. 

And  this  magical  power  was  threatened  ;  this  costly  life 
in  danger.  It  suddenly  seemed  the  one  thing  in  the  world 
best  worth  preserving.  A  few  hours  before  she  had  faced 
the  idea  of  its  loss  so  willingly — her  tears  gushed  afresh  at 
the  memory — even  with  an  obscure,  impatient  longing  she 
had  thought  of  this  thing,  that  she  saw  now  in  its  true 
aspect,  as  unspeakably  terrible  and  tragic.  For  it  was 
something  irreparable.  There  was  nothing  like  her  in  the 

481 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

world  ;  the  things  that  went  to  her  making  had  passed 
away.  To  think  that  all  that  was  represented  by  such  a 
spirit — that  a  force  like  this,  after  enduring  and  dominat 
ing  life  so  long,  should  go  out  into  Nothingness — why,  it 
was  merely  incredible.  But  the  presentment  of  the  possi 
bility  had  shaken  the  foundations  of  the  world. 

It  was  close  on  midnight  when  Val  and  Wilbur  drove  up 
to  the  gate. 

"  Harry,"  said  the  girl,  "you've  been  so  kind,  be  kinder 
still  :  let  me  go  in  alone." 

"Very  well.  I'll  come  back  in  a  quarter  of  an  hour  to 
see  if  I  can  do  anything." 

There  was  a  light  in  the  long  room.  Val  lifted  the 
knocker,  and  as  it  fell  Emmie  opened  the  door.  It  seemed 
to  Val  that  her  sister's  face  said  "Death."  She  pushed 
past  her  without  greeting,  and  into  the  long  room.  Mrs. 
Gano  was  sitting  in  the  great  chair.  She  leaned  forward, 
holding  fast  by  the  arms.  The  veil  falling  on  either  side 
her  face  did  not  hide,  or  even  soften,  the  expression  of 
concentrated  contempt  with  which  she  said,  very  low  : 

"So  you've  come  back." 

"Y— yes.     I  thought— 

"  You  thought  you'd  come  before  it  was  too  late." 

"  Yes  ;  I  was  afraid— 

"I'm  glad  there's  something  you're  afraid  of  doing, 
though  I  can  scarce  imagine  what." 

Val  put  her  hand  up,  bewildered,  to  her  eyes. 

"  The  last  thing  I  would  have  believed  of  Valeria  Gano 
was  that  she  would  do  something  underhand." 

"  Oh,  but  I  didn't— 

"  You  didn't  pretend  to  me  that  you  were  going  to  visit 
Mrs.  Austin  Ball  when  you  were  really  running  after 
Ethan  ?" 

"I  haven't  been  running  after  any  one." 

"  Did  he  write  you  to  come  ?" 

"No." 

"  Did  he  expect  you  ?" 

"No." 

432 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  Some  one  who  went  up  in  the  same  train  with  you  has 
had  the  audacity  to  bring  back  the  report  that  you  went  to 
the  hotel  to  see  Ethan  before  you  went  to  Mrs.  Ball's  at 
all." 

Val  did  not  make  the  expected  denial. 

"I'm  ashamed  of  you" — the  old  face  worked—-" Fve 
never  been  ashamed  before  of  a  woman  of  this  house." 

"  I  am  not  ashamed,"  said  Yal. 

"Then  all  I  can  say  is"— Mrs.  Gano  extended  her 
shawled  arm — "you  are  without  the  feelings  of  a  decent 
woman." 

Val  had  sat  down  like  one  dazed. 

"Ask  Emmeline,"  said  the  old  voice,  shaking  as  it  rose ; 
"the  whole  town  is  ringing  with  the  story,  how  you  left 
your  home  under  false  pretences,,  and  pursued  this  man, 
who  cares  nothing  for  you — " 

"He  does  care  for  me."  Val's  nerves  quivered  under 
her  grandmother's  derisive  laugh,  but  it  did  not  escape  her 
that  Emmie  had  caught  convulsively  at  the  corner  of  the 
great  buffet,  and  was  leaning  against  the  pillared  cup 
board. 

"'I  dare  say,"  observed  Mrs.  Gane,  "that  Ethan  cares 
for  a  good  many  ladies,  if  the  truth's  told,  but  he  doesn't 
get  most  of  them  to  run  about  the  country  after  him  ;  that 
honor  is  reserved  for  you." 

"Wait!"  Val  struggled  to  her  feet  with  a  sense  that 
she  was  choking.  "  I'll  tell  you  the  honor  that's  reserved 
for  me  :  Ethan  cares  more  for  me  than  for  any  one  in  the 
world." 

Emmie  leaned  forward  with  white  face  and  glittering 
eyes. 

"  Indeed,"  said  Mrs.  Gano,  "and  when  is  the  wedding, 
if  one  may  know  ?" 

Val  sank  slowly  back  in  the  chair,  dropping  her  hands  at 
her  sides  and  her  gloves  on  the  floor. 

Emmie  drew  herself  up,  and  the  color  came  back  into 
her  face. 

"It's  only  an  indefinite  engagement  as  yet,  perhaps," 

433 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

said  the  younger  girl.     Her  dark  eyes  flew  to  Val's  hands. 
"  Did  he  give  you  a  ring  ?'' 

"  Yes,"  said  Val,  mechanically. 

"  Why  don't  you  wear  it  ?'' 

"  What  is  that  to  you — to  any  one  but  Ethan  and  me  ?'' 

"  It  Is  something  to  your  family,"  said  Mrs.  Gano.  '•'  I, 
too,  should  like  to  see  the  engagement  ring." 

Val  thought  of  the  gossip-loving  town,  the  endless  ques 
tions,  •'  When  is  the  wedding  ?''  "  Why  the  delay  ?" 

•'  There  is  no  engagement." 

"You  said  he  gave  you  a  ring/  Emmie's  words  were 
quick  and  glad  under  their  suspicion. 

'"  I  caii't  show  you  Ethan's  ring." 

"Why,  where's  your  own  ?"     Emmie  came  nearer. 

Val  got  up  and  faced  her  sister  with  angry  eyes. 

••  How  dare  you  cross-question  me  ?  Don't  you  suppose 
]  know  it's  you  that  have  brought  in  the  town's  chatter, 
and  magnified  it,  and— 

"Your  sister  has  done  no  more  than  her  duty.  She  at 
least  cares  something  for  the  family  dignity.  She  has  felt 
all  this  gossip  to  the  quick." 

"  I've  no  doubt  of  »it,"  said  Val. 

"  Where  is  my  ring  ?" 

'•  Y — your  ring  ?" 

"  Yes,  my  engagement  ring.  There  has  never  been  any 
need  to  hide  that." 

••I- 

4 'Ah,  I  see!  there,  too,  you  took  the  initiative.  You 
don't  bring  back  a  ring,  but  you  left  one  behind.  He  has 
a  pledge  to  show,  if  you  haven't.  But  my  ring  was  never 
meant  for  that ;  send  and  get  it  back.  Give  me  your  arm, 
Emmeline."  They  passed  Val  by.  At  the  threshold  the 
old  woman  turned.  "  Send  and  get  it  back,  1  say  !r 

A  soft  knock  at  the  front  door  arrested  her. 

"  Go  and  see,  Emmeline."  Mrs.  Gano  sat  down  on  the 
chair  just  inside  the  door,  averting  her  face  from  Val.  At 
the  sound  of  Wilbur's  voice  she  half  rose.  "At  this 

hour  !" 

434 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  Oh,  he  just  wants  to  see  me  a  moment/'  Val  moved 
forward. 

Mrs.  Gano  stood  up,  blazing  through  her  spectacles,  and 
cut  off  the  retreat. 

"  Emmeline  will  remind  him  that  you  are  not  now  away 
from  your  own  home.  As  long  as  I'm  here,  life  under  this 
roof  must  be  conducted  with  some  decorum." 

"  Oh,  grandmamma,  grandmamma  !"  said  Val,  hysteri 
cally,  beginning  to  laugh  and  to  cry  all  at  once,  "  don't 
you  see  ?  We  thought  you  were  dying,  and  he's  come  to 
see  if  he  can  do  anything." 

"Dying,  indeed  !"  Her  tone  was  that  of  one  resenting 
some  far-fetched  impertinence.  "  Go  and  tell  him  that  I 
never  felt  better  in  my  life,  and  that  he'd  better  go  home." 

Mrs.  Gano  did  not  appear  the  next  day,  nor  the  next. 
Val  watched  her  opportunity  that  second  evening,  when 
Emmie  was  out  of  the  way,  to  go  into  her  grandmother's 
room  and  see  for  herself  how  she  was. 

Mrs.  Gano  certainly  appeared  in  excellent  health.  She 
was  up,  and  she  was  dressed  with  all  her  customary  care. 
Standing  by  the  window  in  the  waning  light,  she  bent  her 
veiled  head  over  a  book. 

"  Good-evening,  grandmamma  ;  how  are  you  ?" 

Mrs.  Gano  turned  and  looked  over  her  spectacles. 

"  Good-evening." 

"  I  was  afraid  you  were  ill." 

"  You  are  very  determined  I  shall  be  ill,  it  seems  to 
me." 

"  No,  no,  but  I  naturally  wanted  to  come  and — "  She 
stopped,  feeling  too  chilled  and  rebuffed  to  say  more. 

"  To  come  and  bring  me  back  my  ring  ?" 

Val,  without  answering,  walked  to  the  door. 

"  You  did  give  it  to  Ethan  ?     Answer  me." 

"  Yes,  grandmamma." 

"  Have  you  got  it  back  ?" 

"  No,  grandmamma." 

"  But  you've  heard  from  him  ?" 

485 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

:<  Yes — Emmie  must  have  told  you  —  letters  and  tele 
grams/' 

"  Had  you  written  him  to  send  back  my  ring  ?" 

"  Xo,  grandmamma." 

"Why  not?" 

It  crossed  the  girl's  mind,  "  Suppose  I  tell  her,  '  Because 
T  saw  him  throw  it  away."  She  smiled  faintly. 

"  You  will  write  for  it  to-night.     Go  and  do  so  at  once." 

"Xo,  I'm  sorry;  I  can't  do  that — I'm  sorry;"  and  she 
went  out. 

Val  had  a  glimpse  of  her  the  next  morning,  when  Mrs. 
Gano  made  her  final  cold -weather  "flitting"  from  the 
blue  room  np-stairs  to  the  long  room  down -stairs.  But 
it  was  Emmie  and  the  servants  who  assisted.  The  removal 
was  in  the  act  of  being  finished  when  Val  appeared  on  the 
scene.  Xo  notice  was  taken  of  her.  She  went  out  and 
walked  about  the  garden.  Returning  to  the  house  a  little 
later,  she  met  Emmie  coming  down  the  steps  of  the  porch 
with  a  letter. 

1 '  Where  are  you  going  ?" 

"  To  the  post-office,  and  grandma  doesn't  want  to  be  dis 
turbed." 

"Then  you'd  better  go  stand  guard  at  the  door." 

"Oh,  she  can  lock  the  door." 

"I'm  going  to  the  post-office  ;  I  can  take  the  letter." 

"Xo." 

"  Give  it  to  me,  I  say." 

"I  won't  !" 

"I  saw  the  address  ;  it  shall  never  go." 

"Grandma  !"  Emmie  called,  with  all  her  might,  holding 
the  letter  to  her  breast  and  backing  up  the  steps.  "Grand 
ma  !" 

"How  the  old  scenes  of  childhood  repeat  themselves," 
thought  Val.  "I've  been  'going  for  her,'  and  she's  been 
shouting  'Grandma!'  ever  since  we  came  here  as  little 
girls." 

"  Grandma!"  Emmie  was  still  calling,  and  the  long  room 
door  opened. 

486 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  I  want  to  speak  to  you/'  said  Val  to  her  grandmother. 

"  Val  won't  let  me  take  yonr  letter — 

"  Go  this  instant  and  do  as  I  told  you,"  said  Mrs.  Gano 
to  Emmie. 

Val  barred  the  front  door. 

"I  must  speak  to  you,  grandmamma,  before  that  letter 
goes  out  of  the  house." 

"  Let  me  go,  I  say."  Emmie  struggled  to  get  by.  Val 
stood  firm. 

"  How  dare  you — "  Mrs.  Gano  began. 

"  I  dare  for  a  very  good  reason,  and  Til  tell  you  what  it  is 
if  you'll  take  the  letter  and  let  me  speak  to  you  alone." 

They  stood  looking  at  each  other  for  a  moment  over 
Emmie's  shoulder.  Then  Mrs.  Gano  caught  the  letter  out 
of  Emmie's  hand  and  went  back  into  her  room.  Val 
noticed  how  feebly  she  walked,  followed,  and  quickly  shut 
and  locked  the  door. 

"  Open  that  door,"  said  her  grandmother. 

"  I  want  to  speak  to  you  alone." 

"Open  my  door." 

Val  did  so. 

"  Open  it  wide." 

She  obeyed. 

"  Emmeline,  go  away,  and  don't  come  back  till  I  call 
you.  Now,"  she  resumed,  as  Emmie's  footsteps  died  away, 
"let  us  understand— Who  is  mistress  in  this  house?" 

"  You  are." 

"Very  well,  then." 

"  But  you  are  not  my  mistress." 

"What  do  you  mean  by  that  ?" 

"  I  mean  there  are  some  things  I  must  decide  for  myself.'' 

"  I've  ceased  to  trouble  myself  for  the  moment  about 
your  decisions." 

"That  letter  of  yours  to  Ethan  is  to  take  something 
that  concerns  me  more  than  anybody  here — to  take  it  out 
of  my  hands." 

"If  you  can't  manage  your  own  concerns  with  propriety, 
your  family  must  help  you." 

437 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"No,  I  won't  be  helped."  They  looked  at  each  other. 
"  T  must  make  my  own  mistakes.  It's  I  who  have  to  live 
with  them  ;  I've  a  right  to  choose  which  they  shall  be." 

"  As  your  natural  guardian,  it  is  well  within  my  province 
to  write  to  my  grandson  about  your  unheard-of  conduct." 

"No." 

"Oh, "she  laughed  derisively,  "'then,  maybe,  you  will 
at  least  permit  me  to  write  and  ask  that  my  property  be 
returned  to  me." 

"  Your  ring  ?" 

"My  ring." 

"No— please- 
But  the  "  please  "  was  drowned  in  a  tide  of  indignation. 

"  I've  had  enough  of  your  preposterous  assurance.  I'll 
write  what  and  to  whom  I  choose." 

"Ethan  won't  read  your  letter.    I'll  wire  that  he  is  not  to." 

"  It's  likely  he'll  obey  you  !" 

"Oh,  be  very  sure  he  will." 

The  angry  old  eyes  were  wide  with  wonder.  What  was 
the  relation  between  these  two  ? 

"Has  he  asked  you  to  marry  him  ?" 

"No  ;"  and  she  smiled. 

"  You  think  he  will  ?" 

"Yes,  I  think  he  will." 

She  opened  her  lips  to  say  "  When  ?"  but  some  astute 
sense  had  come  to  her  of  how  far  she  could  go.  She  con 
tented  herself  with  a  haughty  lifting  of  the  head. 

"In  my  young  days— 

"  Yes,  yes,  but  things  aren't  always  so  simple  now.  Oh, 
haven't  you  any  faith  in  me,  or  in  Ethan  either  ?" 

"  My  faith  has  had  a  rude  shock." 

"  That  was  only  because  I  didn't  take  you  into  my  con 
fidence.  But  don't  you  know  there  are  some  things  it's 
hard  to  tell  to  older  people  ?  Oh,  don't  you  remember, 
grandmamma  !"  the  girl  cried. 

"H'm  !"  but  the  face  gradually  softened. 

••  Give  us  a  little  time,  and  it  '11  all  come  right.  You  don't 
want  to  get  rid  of  me  instantly,  do  you  ?" 

438 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  You  know  quite  well— 

"Yes,  yes,  you'd  like  us  to  be  old  maids,  but  I—"  she 
shook  her  head  in  the  manner  of  one  regretfully  declining 
;ui  impossible  request.  "May  I  shut  the  door  ?" 

"Yes." 

She  came  back,  sat  down  on  the  crimson  footstool  at  the 
side  of  the  chair,  and  laid  her  head  on  the  arm. 

"  Please  be  kind  to  me,"  she  said  ;  "it's  very  lonely  hero 
at  the  Fort  when  you  aren't  kind."  Neither  moved  for 
several  moments,  and  then  Val  felt  the  touch  on  her  hair. 
The  tears  rushed  suddenly  into  her  eyes.  She  took  the 
hand  and  kissed  it.  "  How  beautiful  your  hands  are  !"  she 
said,  laying  her  cheek  in  the  palm,  and  then  raising  her 
head  to  look  again.  "  The  inside  is  the  color  and  the  text 
ure  of  a  rose-leaf." 

"Is  that  the  kind  of  thing  Ethan  has  been  saying  to 
you  ?"  The  inquiry  rang  a  little  grimly. 

"Oh  no,"  Val  laughed.  "He  couldn't.  My  hands 
aren't  beautiful."  They  were  quiet  awhile.  "  I  haven't 
much  that  I  can  tell  you,  dear,"  the  girl  went  on,  "but 
that  I'm  very  happy — oh,  the  happiest  person  in  the  world  !" 
She  smiled  up  into  the  vigilant  old  face.  "  And  that  in  the 
end  I  shall  have  what — what  I've  wanted  since  I  was  six 
teen — oh,  ever  since  I  was  born,  I  think."  She  lowered  her 
eyes,  and  the  red  came  into  her  cheeks. 

"And  Ethan?" 

"  Oh,  he's  happy,  too.  But  that's  not  the  part  I  can  tell 
you." 

"  Where  is  he  ?     What  is  he  going  to  do  ?" 

"He's  got  a  great  burden  of  responsibility  on  him  just 
now,  with  the  elections  coming  on.  He's  going  to  the 
Chicago  Convention,  you  know." 

"H'm!  Well,  I  don't  pretend  to  fathom  those  new 
fangled  arrangements — but  understand  one  thing — " 

"Yes?" 

"I  won't  have  him  here  till  there's  a  formal  announce 
ment." 

"  Very  well,  dear."     But  the  bright  face  fell. 

439 


CHAPTER  XXXI 

IT  was  a  little  over  a  year  after  this  that  Mrs.  Gano's 
life  was  despaired  of. 

"A  complication  of  troubles,  no  one  of  them  very  serious, 
but  all  together,  and  at  her  age — " 

The  doctor  completed  the  sentence  with  a  gesture. 

The  next  day  Ethan  stood  with  his  cousins  at  the  bed 
side. 

"I  did  not  send  for  you,7'  was  Mrs.  Gano's  greeting. 

"No  ;  Val  did,"  volunteered  Emmie,  who  had  not  been 
told  the  result  of  the  doctor's  consultation. 

"Val" — the  sick  woman  raised  her  head — "you  take  a 
great  deal  upon  yourself." 

She  sank  back  exhausted.  Val  could  not  read  in  Ethan's 
eyes  that  he  had  abandoned  hope.  But  the  girl's  heart  was 
full  of  dread.  She  went  softly  out  of  the  room. 

"Oh,  grandma,  you've  hurt  her  feelings,"  said  Emmie, 
gently. 

"Nonsense!" 

"  I  saw  tears  in  her  eyes.     Think  of  Val  crying  !" 

"It's  no  great  affair  that  one  should  cry  now  and  then. 
Perhaps  it's  just  asavell  that  you've  come,  after  all."  She 
fixed  a  far  from  hospitable  look  upon  her  grandson.  "  I 
was  about  to  write  you.  Leave  us  awhile,  Emmeline." 
She  closed  her  eyes  as  the  girl  went  out,  as  if  to  summon 
strength.  "  I  don't  approve  of  the  tone  of  your  last  letter 
to  Val." 

Ethan  stared. 

"  Oh,  she  reads  me  parts  still.     She  reads  me  a  great 
deal.     The  tone  of  the  later  ones,  especially  the  last- 
She  shook  her  head  with  a  weak,  slow  movement. 

440 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  I  am  sorry  you  think— 

"  We  haven't  time  to  waste  being  sorry ;  let  us  be  dif 
ferent."  With  sudden  energy  she  pulled  out  one  page  of  a 
letter  from  under  her  pillow.  "I  haven't  eyesight  to  read 
your  shocking  writing,  my  dear — " 

"No,  no;  don't  try.  I  remember  what  you  mean.  I 
won't  make  fnn  of  the  Churchman  in  politics  any  more — 
not  in  my  letters.  I  apologize  to  the  bishop." 

"  Oh,  that" — she  smiled — "that  was  rather  amusing, 
though  not  in  the  best  taste.  No  ;  what  I  mean  was  on 
the  last  page.  Eead  from  e  whom  the  gods  love/* 

"Do  you  mean  this  quotation  ?" 

"Yes." 

"  '  Life,  though  a  good  to  men  on  the  whole,  is  a  doubtful 
good  to  many,  and  to  some  not  a  good  at  all/  Is  that  it  ?" 

"Yes.     What's  the  rest  ?" 

"  '  To  my  thought  it  is  a  source  of  constant  mental  dis 
tortion  to  make  the  denial  of  this  a  part  of  religion — to  go 
on  pretending  things  are  better  than  they  are.  To  me 
early  death  takes  the  aspect  of  salvation/ r 

"  Now  I  ask  you,  Can  you  find  nothing  better  than  that 
to  say  to  a  girl  ?" 

"  It  was  not  I  who  found  it." 

"  You  say  it's  George  Eliot.  Well,  she  had  too  much 
sense  to  present  that  view  to  a  young  girl.  She  put  it  in  a 
diary.  If  you've  nothing  better  to  put  into  yours,  so  much 
the  worse  for  you.  Don't  you  know  there  are  two  ways  of 
interpreting  '  whom  the  gods  love  die  young '?" 

"  Yes  " — he  smiled — "  '  young '  when  they  die  at  eighty." 
And  he  looked  at  the  living  commentary. 

"  Very  well ;  it's  a  view  to  keep  in  mind.  But  it's  not 
only  occasional  things  like  that  that  I  deprecate  in  your 
letters  ;  the  letters  themselves  should  cease." 

"  Really."  He  drew  himself  up  and  returned  her  direct 
look,  but  the  wasted  face  and  sunken  eyes  struck  com 
punction  to  his  heart.  "Very  well,"  he  said,  soothingly. 

"It's  not  very  well  at  all,  but  very  ill,  that  you  should 
try  to  waive  the  subject." 

441 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

<;  Waive  it  ?" 

"  Yes.  You  think  I'm  dying,  and  you  won't  oppose  me. 
I'm  not  dying,  and  I  mean  to  see  Val  through  this  before  I 
do  die." 

"  Through  what  ?" 

"  Through  her  foolish  befogment  about  you.  I  had  a 
long  talk  with  Harry  Wilbur  last  week.  He  has  behaved 
well.  You—  She  paused,  as  if  trying  to  pluck  out  the 
heart  of  his  mystery  ;  then,  abandoning  the  attempt:  "I 
want  you  to  promise  me  before  you  leave  this  room  that 
you'll  go  away  by  the  next  train,  and  that  you  won't  see 
Val,  or  write  to  her,  till  one  or  other  of  you  is  safely  and 
suitably  married." 

He  had  a  moment's  temptation  to  pacify  her  at  all  costs, 
but  as  he  looked  into  the  old  face  he  felt  that  a  degrada 
tion  would  cling  to  him  if  he  played  falsely  with  a  spirit 
as  honest  and  courageous  as  this.  She  wasn't  a  woman  one 
could  lie  to  comfortably. 

"  I  can't  promise  you  that,"  he  said,  after  a  struggle. 

"  Why  not  ?" 

"  Oh,  the  old  reason,"  he  answered,  with  a  look  of  weary 
pain. 

"  What  is  that  ?" 

She  craned  her  head  forward. 

*'•'  You  have  to  ask  ?*' 

"  I  have  to  ask." 

"  I  love  her." 

"And  don't  you  know—  Her  loyalty  to  Val  stopped 
her.  "  Why  don't  you  tell  her  ?" 

"I  have." 

"  Then,  why  aren't  you—     What's  the  trouble  ?" 

"  What's  the  trouble  ?"  he  echoed. 

"  Yes.     You  surely  aren't  waiting  for  me  to  go  ?" 

"'  No,  no,"  he  said,  hastily,  feeling  his  fears  for  the  mo 
ment  dislodged  and  feebly  flying  like  a  flock  of  bats  and 
owls  before  the  daylight  in  the  brave  old  eyes.  "  No,  no  ; 
you  are  not  the  barrier." 

"  What  then?" 

442 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  I  suppose,  primarily,  it's  Uncle  John.     He   left  us  a 
legacy." 
-John  !" 
A  sudden  mist  of  weakness  rose  before  her  like  a  veil. 


Ethan  turned  away,  and  paced  the  dim  room  from  the 
bedside  to  the  fireplace,  back  and  forth.  It  came  over  the 
sick  woman  that  it  was  just  so  John  had  walked  and  talked 
about  this  life  he  lacked  the  energy  to  live.  How  like  him 
Ethan  was  growing  in  air  and  manner  !  It  was  as  if  John 
had  got  tip  out  of  his  grave  to  walk  the  old  track  in  the 
old  restless  fashion.  What  was  it  he  was  saying  about 
"  the  wreck  of  creeds  "? 

"  —  the  mere  expediency  of  the  conventions  right  and 
wrong,  and  yet  man's  hopeless  struggle  to  be  rid  of  the 
phantom  Duty.  If  you  pacs  the  churches  by,  she  con 
fronts  you  in  the  schools,  in  the  laboratory,  follows  you  in 
the  streets,  dogs  you  day  and  night,  the  '  implacable  hunt 
ress.'  We  may  free  ourselves  from  all  superstitions  bufc 
Duty.  She,  in  one  guise  or  another,  is  ever  at  the  heels  of 
men." 

"  You  wouldn't  be  a  Gano  if  you  didn't  feel  so,"  she 
said,  wondering  vaguely  if  she  had  dreamed  Ethan's  com 
ing  and  John's  going. 

Which  was  it,  walking  the  worn  and  faded  track  on  Va 
leria's  old  blue  Brussels  ? 

"  Exactly.     So  Uncle  John  said." 

Ah,  then  it  was  Ethan  ! 

"  What  was  it  John  said  ?" 

She  drew  herself  up,  and  shook  off  the  veil  of  faintness. 

"  Several  unforgettable  things  about  man's  first  duty  to 
the  race  —  about  not  inflicting  upon  others  the  burdens  Val 
and  I  must  bear." 

"Burdens  !"  (Ah,  she  remembered  now  what  they  had 
been  talking  about.)  "What  burden,  I'd  like  to  know, 
does  Val  bear  that  you  can't  lift  ?" 

"Her  father's." 

"  Humph  !     And  you  ?" 

443 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  She  and  I  are  of  one  blood.    We  carry  a  double  share." 

"  And  let  me  tell  you  " — she  sat  up  straight  in  the  great 
bed — "a  double  share  of  Gano  is  no  bad  addition  to  the 
world's  brew." 

"  Did  you  ever  say  that  to  Uncle  John  ?" 

"  Good  Heaven  !  To  hear  you  talk,  a  body'd  think  you 
had  invented  the  law  of  heredity — you  and  your  uncle 
John." 

"  God  forbid  !" 

"  Well,  God  has  forbid,  and  let  that  content  you.  He 
is  quite  capable  of  looking  after  His  own  world." 

Ethan's  faint  head-shake  and  his  smile  seemed  to  infu 
riate  her. 

"  My  good  soul,  you  take  too  much  responsibility.  It 
doesn't  lie  with  you  to  refashion  the  world.  God's  universe 
has  been  good  enough  for  a  great  many  good  people." 

"  That  it  has  been  good  enough  for  you  doesn't  cover 
the  question,"  he  said,  brutally,  adding  in  haste,  "even  if 
you  didn't  deceive  yourself.  It  is  not,  as  things  are,  good 
enough  for  all.  But  Uncle  John  was  right  :  it  would  be  a 
better  place  to  live  in  if  people  hesitated  to  perpetuate 
disease." 

"  Perpetuate  disease  !  What  folly  you  talk  !  Don't  you 
see  that  your  improved  new  modes  of  living  breed  new  dis 
eases  ?  If  you  have  not  the  cholera  of  my  youth,  you  have 
the  Bright's  disease  and  the  influenza  that  we  knew  noth 
ing  of.  Disease  is  part  of  the  plan." 

"  What  an  awful  doctrine  !" 

"Not  at  all.  /  cairt  be  sure  that  it  wouldn't  leave  the 
world  poorer  if  disease  were  got  rid  of.  I'm  not,  like  you, 
ready  to  arraign  the  Everlasting."  (Val  opened  the  door 
softly,  came  in,  and  stood  at  the  foot  of  the  bed.)  "To 
my  finite  mind,  unsearchable  are  His  judgments,  and  His 
ways  past  finding  out.  I  only  know  that  they  are  just,  and 
that  I  am  the  work  of  His  hand." 

"  I  envy  you  your  faith." 

"No,  you  don't.  You  think  yourself  superior  to  it,  and 
what's  the  result  ?  You  walk  in  darkness." 

444 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"Not  altogether  in  darkness."  He  looked  across  at  the  girl. 

"Yes,  in  darkness  and' in  fear.  Not  the  fear  of  God — 
that's  tonic — but  in  the  fear  of  pain.  Oh,  I've  watched  this 
phase  of  modern  life.  It's  been  coming,  coming  for  years. 
The  world  to-day  is  crushed  and  whining  under  a  load  of 
sentimentality.  People  presently  will  be  afraid  to  move, 
lest  they  do  or  receive  some  hurt." 

" :  All  people  don't  wear  your  armor. v 

"  There  is  no  armor  but  God/'  she  said,  in  a  clear  voice. 
"  '  We  are  troubled  on  every  side,  yet  not  distressed ;  we 
are  perplexed,  but  not  in  despair  ;  persecuted,  but  not 
forsaken  ;  cast  down,  but  not  destroyed.' ' 

He  bent  and  kissed  her  hand.  She  withdrew  it  and  laid 
it  on  his  head,  smoothing  the  thick,  dark  hair. 

"  You  carry  one  Gano  burden  that  I  pity  you  for  :  you 
think  too  much  about  life." 

"  Ah,  and  it  doesn't  bear  being  thought  about  ?" 

"But  Val  will  help  you  there,"  she  went  on,  ignoring  the 
question.  "All  she  asks  is  the  wages  of  going  on."  She 
reached  out  a  hand  to  the  girl,  who  came  and  stood  by  her 
cousin.  "Val  hasn't  the  letter,  but  she  has  the  spirit. 
Remember,  you  two,  when  you  come  in  the  modern  way 
to  pick  flaws  in  the  Faith,  that  if  I  wore  stout  armor,  as 
you  say,  it  was  not  of  this  world's  forging.  Remember, 
that  I  told  you  I  could  not  have  lived  the  half — no,  nor  the 
quarter  part  of  my  long  life,  if  I  had  not  been  'persuaded 
that  neither  death,  nor  life,  nor  angels,  nor  principalities, 
nor  powers,  nor  things  present,  nor  things  to  come,  nor 
height,  nor  depth,  nor  any  other  creature,  shall  be  able  to 
separate  us  from  the  love  of  God.' '  She  closed  her  eyes. 
"  Now  go  and  leave  me,  you  two.  I  am  tired." 

Treading  softly,  Ethan  went  out  of  the  room.  Val 
watched  beside  her  till  the  night-nurse  came. 

The  next  morning  Mrs.  Gano  sent  for  the  clergyman 
(through  Emmie,  saying  nothing  to  the  others),  and  took 
the  Communion. 

"  It's  a  habit  of  mine,"  she  told  Ethan  afterwards.  "I 
always  commune  several  times  a  year." 

445 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  Only  at  Easter  and  Christmas,"  Val  told  him  privately, 
afterwards.  "  But  she  is  angry  if  we  seem  to  notice  any 
thing  unusual." 

About  four  o'clock  Emmie,  who  did  not  appreciate  the 
gravity  of  the  situation,  came  in  from  visiting  a  young  girl 
who  was  very  ill — not  expected  to  live. 

"  Oh,  grandma,  you  should  have  seen  her  I  so  gentle  and 
so  resigned  ;  saying  good-bye  to  all  her  friends."  Emmie 
broke  down. 

"  11 'm  !  I  consider  that  an  unnecessary  strain  on  the 
feelings." 

"  Oh  no,"  remonstrated  Emmie  ;  "  it  was  beautiful  !  She 
prayed  for  us  all." 

"  She  might  do  that  without  making  a  scene." 

"  Oh,  grandma,  you  don't  realize  what  it  was  like.  I 
never  saw  any  one  so  ready  for  the  other  life  as  Ada 
Brown." 

"Oh  yes,  you  have.  The  best  'getting  ready'  isn't 
done  on  death-beds." 

"  You're  so  unsympathetic,"  murmured  the  girl. 

•'Yes,  I've  hated  scenes  all  my  life;  but  death -bed 
scenes  I  consider  indecent." 

"Oh!"  Emmie  got  up  and,  with  deeply  injured  looks, 
prepared  to  withdraw. 

"  If  you  haven't  done  your  best,  it's  too  late  when  you're 
dying  to  try  to  mend  things.  If  you  have  done  your  best, 
there's  no  more  to  be  said.'' 

And  no  more  was  said  for  several  hours.  She  lay  quite 
peacefully,  took  the  half-hourly  restoratives  from  Val,  but 
was  visibly  weaker  on  each  occasion.  Ethan  went  out  and 
sent  for  the  doctor.  He  came  back  in  time  to  lift  the  half- 
unconscious  form  up  in  his  arms,  while  Val  held  a  glass  to 
the  pale  lips. 

"Enough,"  she  whispered;  "lay  me  down."  And  it 
was  done.  She  opened  her  eyes  and  faintly  pressed  Val's 
hand.  "  Good  girl,"  she  said. 

A  slight  spasm  passed  over  her  face.  She  turned  her 
head  away,  clutched  the  sheet,  and,  with  what  seemed  a 

446 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

superhuman  effort,  drew  it  over  her  face.  Ethan  put  out 
his  hand  to  take  it  away,  but  Val  arrested  him. 

"  Don't !  don't !  She  would  never  let  any  one  see  when 
she  suffered."  The  girl  fell  sobbing  at  the  bedside. 

Some  time  after,  Val  drew  the  linen  down.  The  suffer 
ing  was  over,  so  was  the  long  life. 

Venus  and  the  "new"  servant  had  taken  turns  to  sit 
through  the  day  in  the  long  room,  where  the  body  lay. 
Ethan  was  to  watch  through  the  night,  but  Val  had  in 
sisted  that  she  should  be  therefrom  ten  till  midnight  while 
Ethan  slept,  before  his  watch  began.  He  opposed  her  plan, 
but  gave  way  at  last  and  went  to  lie  down — not  to  sleep. 
Just  before  twelve  o'clock  he  came  out  of  his  room,  down 
over  the  head  of  his  old  enemy  Yaffti,  and  stopped  outside 
the  long  room  door.  Again  a  remembrance  of  his  child 
hood's  awe,  and  the  queer  sense  that  he  ought,  in  spite  of 
all,  to  knock  to  -  night  before  going  in.  He  turned  the 
knob  and  entered  sof  tly. 

The  long,  straight  outlines  of  the  coffin  set  high  upon  a 
bier,  the  candles  burning  at  the  head,  and  in  the  shadow 
at  the  coffin's  side  a  deeper  shadow  on  the  floor.  As  his 
eyes  became  accustomed  to  the  light,  he  saw  it  was  his 
cousin  crouching  there  on  her  knees,  with  bowed  head  and 
hands  folded  straight  before  her,  palm  to  palm.  He  went 
forward  and  tried  to  lift  her. 

"No,  let  me  alone  ;  I — I  want  to  pray." 

"  To  pray,  Val  ?" 

She  bowed  her  white  face. 

"  Not  to  God — I  don't  know  about  God — but  there's 
some  one  else  now  out  in  the  vague,  and  I— I  have  need  of 
her." 

Her  face  drooped  out  of  sight,  and  the  moments  passed. 
The  motionless  figure  with  the  folded  palms  might  have 
been  a  mortuary  marble  on  an  ancient  tomb,  so  rigid  was  it, 
so  uninformed  by  life.  Ethan  sat  at  the  coffin's  foot  and 
watched  the  candles  flare. 

What  if  this  shock  and  jar  were  to  send  Val  back  to  the 

447 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

faith  of  her  fathers  ?  What  was  it  in  its  lesser  effect  upon 
himself  ?  What  was  it  working  in  him  ?  He  looked  at 
the  long,  dim  outlines.  Death  !  For  the  girl,  too,  with 
her  joy  of  life,  her  greed  of  consciousness,  and  for  him,  this 
hour  would  come,  of  rigid  quiet,  and  of  watchers  in  the 
candle-light.  lie  shivered  involuntarily,  glancing  at  tin- 
kneeling  figure.  Death  !  How  much  he  had  thought 
about  it,  and  how  little  he  had  seen.  Here  it  was  beside 
him  in  a  narrow  box.  He  turned  away  his  eyes,  seized 
upon  afresh  by  its  horror  and  its  fascination.  That  moment 
of  dissolution,  what  had  it  been  like?  Even  the  brave  old 
woman  had  covered  up  her  face.  He  peered  a  moment 
into  the  pit,  realizing  for  that  instant  the  wrenching  away 
of  life's  supports,  the  plunge,  the  sinking  to  the  bottom. 
With  an  effort  he  reminded  himself  of  the  peace,  too, 
awaiting  all  down  there,  and  its  being  the  only  possible  so 
lution  to  the  riddle  of  the  world.  But  the  end — the  end  ! 
Earthquake  and  avalanche  it  is,  for  the  one  who  lies 
a-dying  ;  fire  and  flood  and  shock  of  battle,  the  true  end 
of  the  world.  For  us  the  lamp  of  the  sun  was  lit  on  the 
day  of  our  birth,  for  us  the  stars  will  be  snuffed  out  and 
chaos  come  again  when  we  lie  down  to  die. 

Had  it  been  like  that  with  her — this  dead  woman  at  his 
elbow  ?  He  stood  up  ;  cautiously  he  came  to  the  coffin's 
head,  with  parted  lips,  like  one  about  to  put  an  eager  ques 
tion.  He  laid  back  the  white  sheet.  At  sight  of  the  tran 
quil  features  his  own  tense  look  relaxed.  Ah,  no  ;  for  that 
steadfast  spirit  the  end  had  brought  no  terror,  or  if  it  had, 
the  quiet  face  kept  triumphantly  its  secret.  A  movement 
down  in  the  shadow,  and  Val  lifted  her  head,  but  not  as 
high  as  the  coffin. 

"  Ethan  \f> — she  clutched  his  hand — "  don't  you  feel  how 
alive  she  is  ?  Hush  !  in  a  moment  she  will  speak.  I've 
asked  her  for  a  sign." 

They  waited — in  that  silence  that  wraps  the  world. 
Then  Val  stood  up,  and  gave  a  cry  as  she  beheld  the  face 
for  the  first  time  since  the  "laying  out."  She  caught  up 
the  candle,  and  held  up  the  light  before  the  dead,  as  she 

448 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

had  held  it  before  the  living  woman  on  that  evening  long 
ago,  when  Ethan  saw  her  first. 

"Oh,  Ethan,  Ethan,"  said  the  girl,  "she's  smiling! 
That's  her  answer." 

They  had  come  back  from  the  burial,  and  for  the  first 
time  in  their  lives  Val  and  Emmie  were  in  the  old  house 
without  that  constant  presence  that  had  come  to  seem  as 
much  a  part  of  the  Fort  as  its  very  walls,  Ethan  was  still 
•there.  Mrs.  Otway  had  come  to  be  with  them  through 
those  first  days  ;  but  since  the  dead  body  had  been  carried 
out  of  the  house  loneliness  was  lodged  there  like  a  bailiff, 
violating  the  sanctity  and  blessedness  of  home. 

Ethan  found  Val  in  the  long  room  the  next  evening,  sit 
ting  on  the  floor  crying,  with  head  against  the  big  empty 
chair. 

"  Even  you  can't  make  the  awful  loneliness  go  away," 
she  said,  "I  must  wait  awhile  before  I  can  think  about 
taking  up  life." 

The  next  day  she  said  to  him  :  "  You  must  go  away  now, 
and  you  must  come  back  for  me." 

"You  still  think  it  possible  ?" 

"For  you  to  go  away?" 

"For  me  to  come  back." 

"  Possible  ?  Inevitable  !"  She  smiled  up  at  him  with 
an  air  of  tender  mockery.  "  No  escape  from  me.  But 
never  forget" — she  was  grave  enough  now — "we  may  es 
cape  paying  the  penalty — people  do.'" 

He  studied  her  a  moment.  No  ;  she  was  thinking  only 
of  the  natural  "chance."  No  idea  of  trying  to  control  it 
had  come  her  way.  "Nor  could  she  comprehend,"  he 
thought,  "how,  even  if  I  am  wrong  in  my  inveterate  mis 
trust,  or  if  science  should  to-morrow  carry  us  so  far  that 
we  should  be  demonstrably  beyond  the  reach  of  danger — 
she  could  not  realize  that  no  power  011  earth  or  in  the 
heavens  could  make  us  fully  credit  our  security,  could 
carry  us  beyond  the  reach  of  fear.  Imagination  is,  by  so 
much,  mightier  than  reason.  Trust  imagination  to  keep 
2r  449 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

the  fear  alive,  to  work  without  ceasing,  by  day  and  by  night, 
subtly  to  destroy  the  fabric  of  our  lives." 

But  even  when  the  strong  contagion  of  his  fear  had 
reached  and  mastered  her  a  moment,  it  was  fear  with 
another  face. 

"I  see  plainly"— she  laid  her  hands  on  his  shoulders 

"you  think  that  it  will  mend  matters  if  you  have  the 
treachery  to  go  the  long  journey  by  yourself,  and  leave  me 
alone  in  the  world.  But  it  would  only  mean  that  we  should 
die  apart,  and  now,  when  we  might  have  died  later  and  to 
gether,  and— and  " — she  laid  her  face  against  him — "  after 
great  joy."  He  stroked  her  hair  with  an  unsteady  hand. 
"  Look  at  me  !"  she  cried  on  a  sudden,  lifting  up  her  face. 
"  You  aren't  afraid  ?  Don't  you  see  that  I'd  keep  my 
word  ?" 

"  Yes,  you'd  keep  your  word." 

In  his  inmost  heart  it  would  have  helped  him  at  that 
moment  to  have  found  any  softness  of  shrinking  there. 

"  Then  you'll  come  when  I  send— you'll  conie  and  take 
me  away  ?" 

Was  it  fancy,  or  had  she  lightly  stressed  the  "  me  "  ?  He 
thought  of  how  he  had  come  first  of  all  and  taken  John  Gano 
to  the  South  to  die  ;  how  he  had  returned  to  follow  his 
grandmother  to  her  long  home.  He  had  a  sudden  vision 
of  himself  in  the  guise  of  Death.  "Each  time  I  come,"  he 
thought,  "  I  see  some  one  of  this  house  off  on  his  last 
journey.  Soon  little  Emmie  will  be  left  alone." 

But  Emmie  was  not  left  to  the  last,  and  Ethan,  though 
he  never  knew  it,  was  responsible  for  her,  too,  turning  her 
back  upon  the  Fort — upon  the  world. 

The  effect  of  Mrs.  Gano's  death  on  a  clinging  and  de 
pendent  nature  like  Emmie's  was  painfully  apparent.  VaPs 
new-born  sense  of  tender  guardianship  over  her  younger 
sister  was  certainly  not  weakened  by  the  younger  girl's  con 
fession,  after  he  went  away,  of  her  passion  for  Ethan. 

"I  always  thought  it  might  come  right  for  me,"  she 
said,  "till — till  I  saw  the  look  on  his  face  when  he  bade 
you  good-bye.  When  will  you  be  married.  Val  ?" 

* 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  I  don't  know,  dear/' 

"  Some  time  during  this  year  ?" 

"  I  should  tliink  so.'v 

The  younger  girl  bowed  a,  meek  head,  and  turned  to  her 
faith  as  a  refuge,  or,  as  Ethan,  would  have  said,  an  opiate. 
But  the  old  helps  seemed  to  have  lost  somewhat  of  their 
efficacy.  She  began  to  go  to  mass,  and  one  day  sought  an 
interview  with  the  Roman  Catholic  priest.  A  few  months 
afterwards  she  was  received  into  the  Roman  Church. 

Val  would  not  leave  her  sister  while  she  was  going 
through  these  phases,  and  forbade  Ethan  to  come  till  she 
should  send  for  him. 

But  Mrs.  Gano  had  not  been  in  her  grave  a  year  when 
Emmie  herself  made  the  final  move  that  broke  up  the  old 
home.  Plow  much  religions  fervor  had  to  do  with  it,  how 
much  a  sense  of  unfitness  for  the  battle  of  life,  how  much 
a  feeling  in  the  gentle  heart  that  she  was  delaying  VaPs 
happiness,  no  one  ever  knew.  She  bade  her  sister  good 
bye  with  many  tears,  turned  her  back  upon  the  Fort,  and 
entered  the  first  year  of  her  novitiate  at  the  Convent  of  the 
Sacred  Heart. 

A  week  later,  in  early  August,  Val  was  married  very 
quietly  to  her  cousin,  in  the  Church  of  St.  Thomas.  "But 
the  real  marriage  was  that  evening  on  the  river  when  we 
propitiated  the  Fates,"  she  whispered,  as  they  came  down 
the  church  steps. 


CHAPTER  XXXII 

THEY  went  abroad  at  once.  At  first,  in  a  rhythm  of 
rapture  and  of  terror,  the  time  went  by,  now  with  flying, 
now  with  faltering  feet.  But  albeit  living  on  the  volcano's 
brink  is  possible  to  men — living  there  with  fear  is  not. 
The  fire  still  rages  under  foot,  but  the  terror  must  burn 
out,  or  else  the  life. 

It  had  been  to  Ethan  a  standing  marvel  that  happiness — 
forgetf nlness  —  had  visited  them  so  persistently  even  in 
these  first  months.  In  vain  he  said  to  himself,  "Fool  !  be 
sure  Nemesis  keeps  the  score  !"  Of  what  avail  that  a  man 
should  tell  himself  Nemesis  would  exact  the  uttermost 
farthing  for  every  care-free  hour,  when  life,  in  the  guise  of 
the  woman  he  loved,  was  luring  him  on  from  one  day  to 
the  next,  and  the  next,  and  the  next  ? 

April  found  them  at  Nice.  They  had  come  back  to 
their  hotel  one  night  after  the  play,  and  Val  had  gone  out 
on  the  balcony  that  opened  off  their  sitting-room,  declaring 
the  night  too  glorious  to  waste  indoors.  Ethan  followed 
her,  and  while  the  town  went  to  sleep,  they  sat  there  in 
the  moonlight,  and  talked  of  many  things.  In  a  moment 
of  protest  against  the  anodyne  of  gladness  that  he  felt  steal 
ing  into  his  blood,  he  burst  out  with  something  of  his  won 
der  at  their  frequent  and  utter  forgetting  of  the  shadow. 

'''It's  not  wonderful  at  all— it's  what  all  the  world  does 
without  our  good  reason."  She  pressed  closer  to  his  side  ; 
then,  as  if  feeling  the  sudden  frost  that  had  fallen  on  his 
spirit,  she  drew  away,  but  smiling  and  unchilled.  '*  Dear 
lord  and  master,  I  give  you  warning,  I've  done  with  fear 
ing.  I  see  that  Life  means  well  by  us ;  I  shaVt  doubt  her 
any  more." 

452 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  Unberufen";  and  he  smote  the  wooden  balustrade  with 
his  hand. 

"  I  tell  yon  plainly  " — she  flashed  a  tender  defiance  in 
his  face — "  the  Fates  gave  me  a  very  small  stock  of  fear  to 
begin  with,  and  Fve  used  it  up.  It's" — she  held  up  her 
little  hands  and  flung  them  out  to  the  right  and  left — "all 
gone  !" 

"Hush  ;  don't  jest  about  it,  dear." 

"Never  was  more  serious.  I'm  warning  you.  Not  all 
the  king's  horses  nor  all  the  king's  men— 

"Hush,  hush!" 

"  Not  even  " — with  a  disdainful  toe  she  touched  the  yel 
low-covered  book  that  lay  on  the  balcony  floor — "not  even 
your  old  Dumas  fils  can  frighten  me." 

"  I  never  heard  him  accused  of  trying." 

"  Oh  yes,  and  most  insidiously,  in  those  lines  he  wrote 
to  go  before  Diane  de  Lys." 

"  The  lines  to  Rose  Cheri  ?" 

"Yes.  If  I  were  going  to  be  frightened—  Ugh  !  I 
did  have  a  black  moment." 

He  drew  her  into  his  arms  with  a  sheltering  impulse. 

"  I  had  forgotten  the  verses  were — 

"'Oh,  it  wasn't  the  verses,  it  was  the  situation.  lie  had 
loved  her — 

"Yes,  I  remember  ;   and  she  died." 

"  Isn't  it  queer  that  it  should  be  left  to  poor  Rose  Cheri's 
lover  to  convince  an  American,  with  a  very  pessimistic 
lover  of  her  own — left  to  Dumas  to  convince  me  of  death  ? 
You  know  when  Henri  de  Poincy  came  for  you  this  after 
noon  ?" 

"I  left  you  to  rest  and  read  up  La  Dame  aux  Camelias  ; 
not  meditate  on  mortality." 

"'See  how  you've  corrupted  me.  I  was  just  dropping 
asleep  over  the  play,  when  the  book  slipped,  and  the  leaves 
turned  back  to  the  dedication  of  Diane.  I  read  it.  Quite 
suddenly  " — she  sat  up,  and  her  face  was  pale  in  the  moon 
light — "  I  realized  Death.  Not  merely  as  a  thing  that 
might  come  to  one's  grandmother,  but  .  .  .  You  see,  I 

453 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

had  considered  it  too  much  to  realize  it.  But  there  was 
that  dainty  Rose  Cheri  before  me.  She  had  been  loved— 
almost  as  well  as  I — 

11  No,  no."     He  pressed  his  lips  on  hers. 

( '  All  those  kisses  didn't  keep  the  red  on  Rose  Cheri's 
lips.  They  turned  to  evil  gray  ashes.  Her  jewel -bright 
eyes,  back  they  sunk  to  blackness  in  their  sockets.  All 
that  beauty  and  feeling  —  all  that  feeling,  Ethan  —  wiped 
out."  The  living  lovers  clung  together  for  a  moment.  "  I 
suddenly  saw,"  the  girl  wont  on,  "  for  the  first  time  in  my 
life,  really  saw,  that  death  wasn't  a  strange  infrequent  hap 
pening,  but  that  everybody  has  the  face  turned  that  way. 
Yet,  as  I  sit  and  tell  you  about  it,  the  realization  slips 
away — once  more  it's  only  words." 

"Yes,"  he  said,  "that's  part  of  Nature's  colossal  im 
posture." 

At  the  word  "  imposture  "  she  seemed  to  try  to  recapture 
the  revelation  of  the  afternoon. 

"  Dumas  is  dead,"  she  murmured,  looking  across  the 
bay  from  under  knitted  brows.  "  He  felt  all  that,  and  yet 
he's  dead.  The  beautiful  woman  and  the  strong  man,  they 
are  now  as  if  they'd  never  been  here.  Nothing  availed 
them.  His  genius,  her  faith,  her  beauty,  their  love — futile, 
futile — they  had  to  go.  Were  they  alive  as  I'm  alive  ?" 
She  turned  suddenly  on  her  lover,  in  a  kind  of  panic. 
"Did  they  feel  life  so  keen  a  thing  as  we  ?" 

"No,  no ;  he  hadn't  you  to  love." 

"  Surely  it  was  not  like  this,  or  they  could  not  have 
died."  She  lay  back  in  his  arms  and  looked  up  at  the  full 
white  moon.  Presently  she  smiled.  "As  I  sit  here  to 
night  I  simply  do  not  believe  one  little  bit  in  this  rumor 
of  death — not  as  touching  me.  Other  people — yes — only 
not  me." 

As  she  lifted  her  head  from  his  shoulder  and  sat  up  so 
straight  and  sure,  the  man's  nerves  shrank  under  a  sense 
of  desertion.  In  a  sudden  access  of  physical  pride  and  joy 
ous  sovereignty,  she  seemed  to  have  cast  him  off,  along  with 
Rose  Cheri  and  the  rest  of  that  great  "nation  that  is  not." 

454 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  No  one  was  ever  truly  alive  before/7  she  was  saying 
half  to  herself,  her  wide  shining  eyes  turned  upward  to  the 
stars.  "That  was  why  they  died.  But  me — 

"  Oh,  my  darling  !"  he  said,  bending  towards  her,  "  you 
are  quick  in  every  fibre  and  in  every  sense.  The  wild  taste 
of  life  has  stung  your  palate,  and  I  sit  and  wonder  how 
long — how  long —  What  need  to  finish,  she  must  under 
stand.  But  her  thoughts  were  turned  another  way. 

"How  long?"  She  laughed  low  and  joyously.  "I've 
enough  life  to  last  as  long  as  the  sun  has  heat  to  warm  the 
world.  I  shall  go  on  and  on  and  on."  She  turned  to  him 
with  a  quick,  free  movement,  and  stopped  at  sight  of  his 
face,  as  though  she  had  been  smitten  into  stone.  After  a 
moment  she  bowed  her  head  down  on  his  knees.  They  sat 
motionless.  When  she  raised  her  head,  it  was  to  say  : 
"  Never  mind,  we've  come  safely  so  far  ;"  but  her  face  was 
bright  with  tears. 

"  0  life,"  she  said  softly,  looking  upward  to  the  stars, 
"don't  let  me  die!" 

"Are  you  so  happy  ?"  he  said,  hungering  to  hear  it  was 
for  what  he  brought  her  she  would  stay. 

"'Yes,  yes,"  she  said,  grasping  his  hand;  "and  I'm  so 
hungry  for  this  being  alive.'' 

He  drew  his  hand  away. 

"  A  thousand  years,"  he  said,  with  a  kind  of  anger, 
"wouldn't  quench  your  curiosity,  or  weary  your  quest  for 
joy  ;  but  a  little  sorrow  may." 

She  shook  her  head  dreamily. 

"  I  think  my  soul  must  have  waited  long  about  the  gates 
of  life  begging  to  be  let  in.  Fm  so  content  to  be  here,  so 
willing  to  take  the  rough  with  the  smooth,  so  grateful  for 
the  good — 

"  So  patient  with  the  wrong,"  he  added,  with  tender 
self-reproach,  and  he  gathered  her  up  to  his  breast.. 

She  laughed,  a  low  laugh,  with  her  face  pressed  close  to 
his,  and  he  felt  forgiven,  but  the  girl  was  only  saying  to 
herself,  "  To  think  that  I've  bothered  about — why,  it  would 
be  grotesque  for  me  to  die.  There'd  be  no  meaning  in  it — 

455 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

a  kind  of  violence  against  Nature  and  probability  that 
reason  revolts  at.  Everything  matters  so  to  me.  It's  for 
my  sake  the  sun  shines,  it  is  for  me  the  moonlight  is  mys 
terious,  and  the  ways  of  life  so  many,  and  so  thickly  set 
with  adventure." 

"You'll  admit/' she  said  aloud,  at  last  making  ready  to 
go  in,  "  most  people  have  never  suspected  how  good  and 
wonderful  the  world  is — so,  plainly,  it  must  be  for  me  (mid 
one  or  two  besides)  that  it's  so  fine  and  terrible  a  thing  to 
be  a  dweller  in  it.  Poor  world  !" — she  stopped  on  the 
threshold  and  looked  back  at  the  night — "  when  men  rail 
at  you  so  dully,  no  wonder  you  stop  their  mouths  with 
dust.  But  for  me,  I  love  you.  Even  when  you  hurt  me 
I  love  you — I  love  you  !  You'll  not  get  many  to  bear  so 
good-humoredly  with  all  your  wild  moods  as  I — make  the 
most  of  me.  Let  me  stay  a  long,  long  time."  And  again 
she  went  blithely  to  face  death,  after  the  manner  of  women. 

In  London  and  Paris  Val  made  her  husband  renew  his 
old  friendships,  and  show  her  that  picturesque  and  holiday 
side  of  life  so  charming  to  the  American  woman.  Dressed 
for  Lady  Eamont's  garden-party  one  day  at  the  end  of 
June,  Val  stood  radiant  in  her  pretty  clothes  before  the 
long  mirror  in  the  drawing-room  of  her  house  in  Bruton 
street,  waiting  for  the  carriage. 

"  I  feel  like  a  lady  on  a  Watteau  fan,"  she  said,  rejoicing 
frankly  in  the  dainty  elegance  of  her  Paris  frock.  "It's 
all  so  airy  and  so  cobwebby.  Don't  breathe  hard,"  she 
cried,  as  Ethan  bent  over  her;  "a  breath  will  blow  me 
away. '' 

"Are  you  as  happy  as  you  look  ?"  he  asked,  smiling. 

"Happy  !  I  think  nobody  was  ever  so  happy  before.  I 
believed  1  knew  how  beautiful  life  was,  but  I  didn't." 

She  looked  out  of  the  open  window.  It  was  one  of  those 
peerless  summer  days  with  which  England  repays  her 
months  of  gloom.  The  white  silk  curtains  waved  in  the 
soft  air,  bringing  in  wafts  of  mignonette  from  the  window- 
boxes.  Val  threw  back  her  head  with  the  old  movement, 

456 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

smiling.  "  Yes,  it's  easy  to  see,"  said  Ethan  to  himself, 
"easy  to  see  what  she's  thinking/' 

"  I'm  glad  you're  so  happy.  I  was  afraid  you  didn't 
sleep  well  last  night;  you  were  so  restless." 

"  Was  I  ?"  She  laughed.  "  Oh,  I  suppose  I  grudge  the 
time  I  waste  in  sleep.  There's  the  carriage." 

As  the  days  wore  on  he  lost  his  fear  of  pricking  the 
bright  bubble  of  her  gladness,  The  life  they  led  left  little 
time  for  meditation,  and  Val's  enjoyment  of  balls,  races, 
and  kindred  festivities,  gave  him  an  interest  in  the  old 
round  that  surprised  no  one  more  than  himself.  He  saw- 
it  all  in  a  new  and  tender  light,  this  mask  of  fair  women, 
leagued  in  their  age-old  conspiracy,  gliding  across  ball 
room  floors,  trailing  flower-like  fabrics  over  velvet  lawns, 
decorating  the  tops  of  coaches,  and  making  of  boats  up 
the  river  floating  gardens.  There  was  much  art  in  this 
determined  turning  of  life  into  a  festival ;  there  might  be 
philosophy,  too,  in  woman's  light-hearted  begging  of  the 
"  Question." 

If  the  men  tried  here  and  there  to  wile  Val's  heart  away, 
why,  that  was  part  of  the  game,  and  the  women  certainly 
did  not  neglect  Val's  husband. 

"  You  are  so  different  to  most  American  men,"  said  a 
certain  smart  lady  who  had  shown  him  frank  preference. 
<e  Oh,"  said  Gano,  "  have  you  known  many  ?" 
"  Well,  several ;  and  you're  quite  different." 
"  I  am  sorry  to  fall  below  the  standard." 
"  You  don't  fall  below  ;  you  do  the  opposite." 
"  You  make  me  wonder  about  the  others." 
es  Oh,  they  were  all  right,  but  I  don't  like  American  men 
as  a  rule." 

"  You  must  try  to  keep  the  awful  knowledge  from  cross 
ing  the  Atlantic." 

"  Oh,  they  know  we  don't  care  much  for  the  men." 
.  "I'll  tell  you  what  we'll  do" — he  spoke  as  one  having 
an  inspiration — "  we'll  kill  off  all  our  men  if  you'll  kill  off 
ail  your  women." 

457 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

She  laughed  goocl-humoredly. 

"  We'd  spare  the  Southerners  for  your  sake ;  besides, 
the  English  have  always  had  a  weakness  for  Southerners. 
You're  more  like  us.      You  don't  make  little  set  speeches, 
and  you  are  delightfully  quiet  and  grave." 
Ethan  burst  out  laughing. 

"  One  has  to  come  to  England  to   be  praised  for  one's 
blemishes/'  he  said. 

"  Blemishes  !    Do  you  know  the  most  objectionable  thing 
in  the  American  manner  is  excessive  cheerfulness  ?" 
"  You  surprise  me." 
"I've  already  said  I  didn't  mean  you." 
Whereat  Ethan  laughed  again  with  more  amusement  than 
he  often  showed. 

"Say  the  most   obvious,   commonplace   thing,   and  an 
American  will  laugh/'  she  said,  reproachfully. 
"Ah,  you  see,  our  national  sense  of  humor — " 
"Nonsense;  it's  just  uneasiness  and  excessive  desire  to 
please." 

"Ah  yes,  we  are  very  simple-minded." 
"There's  nothing  so  maddening  as  a  constant  smile. 
That  girl  over  there  in  the  pervenche  silk,  an  old  school 
friend  of  mine,  was  condoling  with  me  before  you  came 
upon  having  a  brother-in-law  whose  habitual  expression 
is  a  fixed  frown.  I  said  it  didn't  trouble  any  of  us 
in  the  least.  Both  my  sister  and  I  had  long  ago  agreed, 
if  we  had  to  choose  between  a  man  with  a  perpetual 
laugh  or  a  perpetual  scowl,  we'd  take  the  scowl  and  be 
grateful." 

"Ah,  I  begin  to  understand  your  ladyship's  tolerance 
for  me." 

"  Come,  now,  be  honest ;  don't  you  realize  how  much 
more  Americans  laugh  than  other  people  ?" 

"  If  it  is  so,  it's  because  we're  the  saddest  race  under  the 
sun." 

Still  he  smiled. 
"'Saddest—" 

"Yes  ;  in  proof  of  it  our  feverish  activity,  and  our  fre- 

458 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

quent  laughter.     You  remember  the  boy  who  whistled  in 
the  dark  ?     The  American  laughs  on  the  same  principle." 

It  was  early  August.,  and  they  were  in  Scotland.  A 
letter  came  from  Emmie  saying  that  she  had  been  ill,  and 
was  a  little  better ;  but  there  was  a  settled  sadness  in  the 
few  lines  that  roused  Val  out  of  her  engrossed  delight  in 
her  first  experience  of  country-house  life. 

"I'm  so  sorry,  Ethan — when  we're  having  such  a  good 
time,  too  ;  but  I  almost  think —  Emmie  has  no  one  in  the 
world,  you  know,  but  me." 

They  took  the  next  steamer  back  to  America. 

The  news  they  found  awaiting  them  at  the  Fort  was  in 
the  shape  of  a  letter  from  the  Mother  Superior,  saying 
that  Emmie  was  certainly  better,  but  that  she  refused  to 
see  her  sister.  She  was  for  the  moment  immovable  in 
her  resolve  to  hold  no  personal  communication  with  the 
outside  world.  This,  from  the  clinging  and  affectionate 
Emmie,  was  a  great  blow  to  Val.  She  shed  the  first  tears 
since  her  marriage  over  the  letter.  But  until  Emmie  re 
lented,  or  was  quite  well,  she  wanted  to  be  within  call. 

"You  think  you'll  like  staying  here?"  Ethan  looked 
about  the  faded  room. 

"Yes;  I  love  the  Fort.     I  belong  here." 

"I  must  have  it  freshened  up  for  you,  then." 

"No,  I  like  it  as  she  left  it." 

The  first  person  to  call  at  the  Fort  was  Harry  Wilbur. 
He  appeared  to  be  laboring  under  a  suitable  depression, 
and  never  addressed  Val  without  Mrs.  Gano-ing  her.  She 
said,  at  last  : 

"  You  mustn't  be  politer  than  I  am,  and  I  can't  possibly 
call  you  anything  but  '  Harry. " 

He  flushed  and  laughed. 

"All  right;"  and  he  presently  gave  himself  up  to  an 
undisguised  satisfaction  in  Val's  return. 

It  was  from  Wilbur  she  heard  that  Julia  Otway  was  en 
gaged  to  be  married  to  Mr.  Tom  Scherer,  Judge  Wilbur's 

459 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

new  law  partner.  The  late-comer  was  reputed  to  be  tre 
mendously  clever,  and  to  have  written  a  very  "modern" 
and  highly  successful  novel. 

"  Scherer's  great  "  Harry  said,  in  his  good-natured  way. 
"  He  does  and  is  all  the  things  my  father's  been  bothering 
so  long  to  make  me." 

"And  do  you  like  him — this  Scherer  ?" 

"  Course  ;  he's  taken  a  frightful  responsibility  off  me. 
Besides,  he's  a  capital  fellow." 

Val  and  Ethan  were  going  over  the  river  one  morning 
soon  after  their  arrival,  when,  on  the  bridge  in  the  narrow 
footway,  they  met  Julia  and  Jerry  face  to  face.  Val  shook 
hands  with  them  both,  and  as  she  talked  to  Jerry  she 
heard  Ethan  saying  they  had  expected  to  see  Julia  before 
this  —  when  was  she  coining  to  the  Fort?  Julia  made 
plausible  excuses  for  not  having  called  before,  and  Ethan 
laughingly  blamed  Mr.  Scherer. 

"  Bring  him  to  see  us,"  he  said,  as  they  parted. 

The  next  morning,  Julia  passed  by  wliile  -Ethan  was 
giving  some  directions  to  the  gardeners.  He  called  out  to 
her,  and  they  talked  awhile  at  the  gate.  Val,  at  an  upper 
window,  wondered  what  she  could  say  to  her  husband  that 
would  not  betray  the  ground  of  that  old  quarrel,  and  that 
yet  would  relieve  her  from  pretending  she  had  shaken  off 
the  effects  of  it.  As  she  stood  there  the  bell  sounded. 
Julia  glanced  up  and  saw  her.  Ethan,  seeing  a  change  in 
the  face,  looked  up,  too,  and  called  out  : 

"Oh,  Val,  here's  Miss  Julia;  make  her  come  in  and 
lunch  with  us." 

Val  went  down  and  seconded  her  husband's  invitation. 
Julia  declined,  but  Ethan  insisted.  In  the  end  she  came. 
Twice  in  the  following  week  Ethan  went  over  to  play 
tennis  at  the  Otways'.  The  last  time  he  brought  Julia 
and  Mr.  Scherer  back  with  him. 

Val  was  sitting  on  the  back  veranda  with  Ernest  and 
Sue  Halliwell. 

When  the  Ilalliwells  had  gone,  and  Ethan  and  Mr. 
Scherer  had  strolled  off  to  see  how  the  newly  rolled  and 

460 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

sodded   croquet-ground  was   looking,  Julia   said,   with   a 
slight  embarrassment  : 

"Your  husband  just  made  us  come  back  with  him." 

"  Fin  very  glad." 

"I  told  him  you  didn't  want  to  see  me." 

Val  looked  up  quickly. 

"  He  must  have  thought  that  strange." 

"  He  did.     So  then  I  knew  you  had  never  told." 

"Told  what?" 

"Oh,  about  that  old  school-girl  silliness  of  mine." 

"You  must  have  known  that  I  would  never — " 

"Yes,  yes — especially  now  that  I'm  engaged." 

"I  don't  see  how  that  affects  the  situation/'  said  Val,  a 
little  haughtily. 

Julia  was  looking  after  the  men. 

"  You've  never  forgiven  me,"  she  said,  "  and  yet  I 
should  think  you'd  been  happy  enough  to — " 

"To  what?" 

"Not  to  harbor  ill-will." 

"I  don't  see  what  rny  being  happy  has  to  do  with  it." 

"Why,  everything.  The  one  who  has  got  what  she 
wants  hasn't  much  ground  for  complaint." 

"  Much  ground  for  complaint  ?"  Val's  eyes  sparkled. 
"What  do  you  mean  ?  AVhat  have  I  to  complain  of  ?" 

"Nothing,  of  course,  really.  But  I've  thought  the  few 
times  we've  met  that  you  —  that  you  didn't  particularly 
like —  '  She  stopped. 

"When  I  don't  like  things  I  change  them,"  said  Val, 
privately  congratulating  them  both  that  Julia's  sentence 
was  left  hanging  in  the  air.  Pride  was  working  strongly 
upon  her.  "  It's  true  enough  that  I've  got  what  I  want ;  but 
haven't  you  ?"  The  two  men  came  back  round  the  L, 
crunching  the  new  gravel  under  their  feet.  "The  Halli- 
wells  said  you  are  to  be  married  next  month." 

"  Other  people  always  know  what  I'm  going  to  do  so 
much  better  than  I  do  my  myself." 

"  It's  not  true,  then  ?" 

"It's  not  settled." 

461 


TILE    OPEN    QUESTION 

The  men  were  within  ear-shot. 

"  You  and  Mr.  Scherer  must  stay  to  supper,"  said  Val, 
with  a  deliberate  cordiality,  as  the  men  rejoined  them, 
"  mustn't  they,  Ethan  ?" 

In  the  evening  old  Mr.  Otway  and  Jerry  came  over. 
Julia  played,  and  \\erjiance  sang  student  songs. 

Julia  noticed  that  Mr.  Gano  made  no  effort  to  get  Val  to 
sing,  and  she  fell  to  imagining  what  his  feelings  had  been 
when  he  found  that  he  had  silenced  that  wonderful  voice. 
She  went  home  full  of  secret  pain  and  irritation — irritation 
at  Tom  Scherer  because — well,  because  he  was  not  Ethan 
Gano  ;  pain  at  finding  how  the  old  feeling  she  had  thought 
de:id  had  sprung  up  quick,  tormenting,  under  the  careless 
glance  of  those  sombre  eyes. 

Almost  every  morning  she  resolved  to  go  no  more  to  the 
Fort ;  almost  every  evening  saw  the  resolution  broken. 

If,  in  the  days  that  followed,  Julia's  odd  footing  in  the 
house  was  not  discouraged  by  Yul's  proud  tolerance,  it 
was  maintained  by  an  attitude  on  Ethan's  part,  entirely 
friendly,  sometimes  even  flattering.  With  Scherer,  too,  lie 
was  on  the  best -of  terms.  Scherer,  immensely  pleased  at 
Gano's  liking  for  his  society,  was  ready  to  smoke  and  talk 
politics  or  literature  till  two  in  the  morning.  He  could 
sit  in  court  all  day,  play  tennis  or  sing  songs  in  the  even 
ing,  and  again  sit  up  half  the  night. 

"Do  men  always  need  outsiders?  Is  a  wife  never 
enough  ?  Still,  it  isn't  Scherer  I  mind,"  Val  said,  honestly 
enough,  to  herself,  "  although  he  is  beginning  to  echo  and 
imitate  Ethan  absurdly.'' 

The  real  trouble  was  that  they  went  almost  nowhere 
without  Julia.  It  was  Julia  and  Ethan  who  one  day,  when 
Val  was  confined  to  her  room  with  a  cold,  arranged  the 
steamboat  excursions  up  and  down  the  Mioto. 

Val,  lying  in  bed  in  the  blue  room,  heard  them  laughing 
down  on  the  back  veranda. 

Ethan  came  up-stairs  an  hour  or  so  later, 

"Oh,  you're  awake  !" 

"  Well,  yes  ;  it  isn't  likely  Fd  sleep  with  all  that  noise." 

" 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  What  noise  ?" 

"Why,  Julia  and  you  laughing." 

"Oh,  Fm  sorry.  It  was  stupid  of  us  to  leave  the  door 
open." 

The  answer  jarred. 

"  Does  Julia  know  my  cold's  worse  ?" 

"Yes,  she  wanted  to  come  up  and  see  you." 

"  She  did  I" 

"  I  wouldn't  let  her  disturb  you.  But  she's  got  a  plan — 
rather  an  amusing  plan.  Julia  is  full  of  ideas." 

"What  kind  of  ideas  ?" 

"  Oh,  plans  for  passing  the  time.  This,  for  instance  : 
going  one  of  these  fine  days  with  hampers  and  some  good 
fiddlers  on  an  absurd  flat-bottomed  steamboat,  that  stops 
every  time  a  passenger  comes  out  of  the  virgin  forest  to 
the  water's  edge  and  waves  an  umbrella  to  the  man  at  the 
wheel." 

"  Going  an  excursion  on  the  steamboat  is  an  idea  that 
every  man,  woman,  and  child  in  New  Plymouth  has  had 
for  the  last  century." 

Ethan  smiled. 

"Shall  I  read  to  you  ?" 

"  You  don't  want  to  talk  ?" 

She  had  some  ado  not  to  cry,  but  she  kept  saying  to  her 
self  :  "Silly!  silly!  silly!" 

"  I  don't  mind,"  he  answered  ;  but  he  walked  about  the 
room  looking  at  Aunt  Valeria's  atrocities,  and  naturally, 
Val  said  to  herself,  growing  grave.  How  he  had  laughed 
down  on  the  veranda  ! 

In  a  couple  of  days  she  had  shaken  off  her  cold  suffi 
ciently  to  go  on  the  river  with  Julia's  party.  Although  it 
was  little  pleasure  to  Val,  she  offered  no  slightest  objection 
to  this  excursion  or  to  the  second  "  up  river." 

But  although  no  one  noticed  anything  amiss,  the  days 
were  bringing  her  an  acute  disquiet.  She  saw  clearly  that 
Julia  was  not  in  love  with  Tom  Scherer,  and  she  saw  fur 
ther.  A  new  sense  came  to  her,  not  altogether  depressing, 
of  life's  fecund  possibility  for  unhappiness.  So  many  ways 

468 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

of  going  wrong,  only  one  of  going  right  !_  Well,  it  was  very 
exciting. 

'•'Is  this  what  the  story-books  mean?  Am  I  what's 
called  jealous  ?"  she  asked  herself.  "  Am  I  secretly  afraid 
of  Julia  ?  Was  Ethan  right  ?  Does  even  joy  like  ours 
change  and  pass  ?  No,  no  ;  it  will  be  all  right  to-morrow. v 

Although  she  called  herself  a  thousand  fools,  and  guilty 
of  vulgar  suspicions  into  the  bargain,  she  presently  could 
not  rid  herself  of  the  feeling  that  Ethan  was  a  little  cold 
to  her  ;  the  mere  fancy  that  this  might  be  so  made  her 
shrink  from  him,  lightly  evade  his  caress,  first  frustrate 
and  then  deny  his  tenderness. 

"You  are  tired  of  being  kissed  ?"  he  said,  one  morning. 

As  she  only  smiled  and  made  no  answer,  he  did  not  for 
thirty-six  hours  offer  to  repeat  the  offence,  and  went  with 
lowered  looks,  silent,  impenetrable,  when  they  were  alone. 

"Is  it  really  so  ?"  she  burst  out  that  second  evening, 
after  Julia  and  the  rest  went  home.  "  Is  it  only  wheii 
others  are  here  that  you  are  happy  ?" 

"  It's  only  when  others  are  here  that  I  can  forget  that 
there's  a  rhythm  even  in  such  love  as  ours." 

"  What  do  you  mean  by  a  rhythm  ?" 

"  A  rise  and  a  fall.  A  winter  because  there  has  been  a 
summer." 

"No,  no,  Ethan."     Her  voice  rang  piteously. 

"I'm  not  blaming  you,  dear." 

"  Blaming  me?     I  should  think  not." 

She  spoke  almost  cavalierly. 

"  It's  the  same  with  the  fortunes  of  love,  I  suppose,"  he 
went  on,  "  as  it  is  with  the  fortunes  of  families,  of  nations, 
creeds,  crops."  He  laughed  a  little  ironic  laugh.  "  The 
very  planets  have  a  time  of  prosperity,  a  point  of  ascen 
dancy  roached,  a  time  of  failing,  an  ultimate — 

"Ethan,  Ethan,  what  are  you  saying!"  She  stopped 
him  as  he  paced  the  parlor  from  Daniel  Boone  to  the  mir 
ror.  She  remembered  the  evening  that  her  father,  in  that 
very  room,  had  "  forbidden  the  banns."  "  You  know  1 
don't  let  you  talk  like  that  of  our  dear  love." 

464 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  I  only  say  it  to  myself,  child,  as  a  kind  of  comfort." 

"  You  need  comforting,  too  ?" 

He  nodded,  smiling  in  his  grave  way. 

"  I  tell  myself  it's  not  my  darling  that  is  to  blame. 
We've  been  almost  too  happy.  The  old  leveller,  Nature, 
is  at  her  eternal  work  of  rotation,  turning  the  big  wheel 
round.  By  so  much  as  we've  been  on  the  top  we  must  go 
under  for  a  little." 

"Ethan,  that  may  be  good  science,  but  it's  very  poor 
love." 

"It's  the  best  apology  I  can  invent  for  you." 

"For  me?"  Her  voice  rang  along  an  indignant  cir 
cumflex. 

"  It's  certainly  not  I  who  was  tired." 

"  Oh,  Ethan,  I  was  never  tired  for  the  smallest  little  bit 
of  an  instant.  Kiss  me  !  kiss  me  !"  She  clung  about  his 
neck.  "  It  was  only  that  I  was  tired  of  Julia's  high  laugh, 
and — and  tired  of  her  altogether  !"  she  burst  out. 

"  Then  why  do  you  have  her  here  ?"  he  asked,  without 
a  moment's  hesitation. 

"  Oh,  only  because  you  like  her  so  much,"  Val  said,  with 
her  old  childish  frankness. 

"  As  to  that,  I  like  her  well  enough.  She's  provincial, 
but  she's  lively  and  good-tempered.  However,  if  she's  got 
on  your  nerves,  I  don't  want  her  about." 

"It  would  be  very  selfish  of  me — "  Val  began,  with  re 
luctantly  righteous  air. 

"  Nonsense.  How  long  do  you  want  to  stay  here,  any 
how  ?" 

"Do  you  mean  you're  ready  to  go  away?"  she  asked, 
her  lips  parting  and  her  white  teeth  gleaming  in  a  half  in 
credulous  smile. 

"  I  do  call  that  ingratitude." 

"  Of  course  I  know  it  was  for  my  sake  at  first — 

"First  and  last,  Mrs.  Grano  ;  though  what  good  it  does 
Emmie — " 

"  Oh-h  !"  She  leaned  her  head  against  him  with  a  hap 
py  sigh.  "  You're  thinking  of  Emmie  !" 

465 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"As  to  Julia,"  he  said,  reflectively,  "  I  didn't  know 
enough  about  women's  friendships  to  be  able  to  tell— 

He  looked  down  at  the  face  on  his  shoulder  considering. 

"  Yes,"  she  said,  smiling,  "  let  me  in — tell  me  the  worst." 

"You  see,  Julia" — he  hesitated — "'it  won't  be  easy  to 
make  you  understand  without  hurting  you." 

Val  stood  suddenly  erect,  the  smile  gone.  But  very 
gently  he  pressed  her  head  down  on  his  shoulder  again, 
and  rested  his  cheek  on  her  hair. 

"You  see,  Julia  is  like  a  game  of  tennis,  or  a  pleasant 
picture  of  the  anecdotic  kind.  She  doesn't  give  one  cause 
to  think  ;  she  is  mildly  amusing  and  agreeably  irrelevant." 

"  What  is  there  in  that  to  hurt  me  ?"  said  the  suspicious 
voice  under  his  chin. 

"  There  is  nothing  that  ought  to  hurt  you.  But  such  a 
person  may  at  times  be  a  sort  of — a  sort  of— 

"Distraction — refuge  :  just  what  I  used  to  be." 

"  As  if  any  one  ever  could  be  what  you  used  to  be  !" 

He  held  her  closer. 

"You're  saying  what  I  used  to  be,  as  if — " 

She  struggled  to  get  out  of  his  arms,  but  he  kept  her 
prisoner. 

"  Hush  !  Listen.  It's  only  this,  dear  :  In  sharing  my 
life  you  have  come  a  little  —  a  little  under  the  shadow. 
No,  you  aren't  what  you  used  to  be — a  gay  little  cousin 
that  one  could  laugh  with,  and,  as  I  thought,  leave  be 
hind.  You  are  something  so  much  nearer  that  you  are  a 
dearer  self.  You  give  hope  a  new  gladness" — she  looked 
up  with  happy  eyes — "you  give  fear  fresh  poignancy." 

"No — no,"  she  said  lightly,  concerned  only  to  lift  him 
out  of  his  grave  mood.  *'  No,  Ethan,  I'm  sorry  to  disap 
point  you,  but  I  have  not  found  it  dull  or  gloomifying  to 
be  with  you.  You  invent  sad  things  to  say,  but  we've  had 
a  heavenly  time  — till  just  lately." 

"  Yes,  we  found  happiness  if  ever  two  people  did  !"  But 
he  looked  at  her  with  so  strange  a  passion  of  questioning 
that  she  kissed  his  eyelids  down. 


CHAPTER  XXXIII 

SHE  longed  more  and  more  to  go  abroad  again. 

"  As  soon  as  ever  you  please/'  said  Ethan. 

How  good  he  was  to  her  !  How  he  indulged  her  !  How 
wonderful  it  was  to  be  loved  by  such  a  man  !  Soon  they'd 
be  off  again  on  their  travels,  seeing  the  beautiful  Old 
World.  Oh,  Life  was  keeping  her  promises  every  one  ! 

Five  days  after  the  talk  about  Julia  came  a  letter  from 
Mother  Joachim,  saying  that  Emmie's  health  was  quite 
restored,  but  that  she  was  inflexible  about  not  seeing  her 
sister.  Mother  Joachim  herself  thought  it  best  that,  for  a 
year  or  so,  nothing  more  should  be  said  of  the  proposed 
meeting.  Perhaps  the  girl  would  be  willing  to  see  her 
friends  before  taking  the  black  veil. 

With  a  joy,  for  which  Val,  thinking  of  her  sister,  re 
proached  herself,  she  and  Ethan  had  begun  to  lay  their 
plans  for  a  winter  in  Italy.  Suddenly,  without  reason  as 
it  appeared  to  her,  his  interest  seemed  to  falter,  his  good 
spirits  to  flicker  out. 

Athough  even  Val  would  not  have  denied  that  her  hus 
band  could,  if  put  to  it,  produce  at  any  moment  of  the  day 
or  night  the  blackest  charges  against  the  order  of  the 
world,  he  had  not  hitherto  proved  a  depressing  person  to 
live  with.  Like  certain  other  unsanguine  souls,  he  was  a 
pleasanter  companion  than  many  an  arrant  optimist. 

This  was  more  certainly  the  case  when  politics  were  a 
little  in  the  background.  Val  longed  to  see  the  subject 
banned.  It  seemed  the  one  thing  that  took  Ethan  quite 
out  of  her  sphere,  and  kept  him  in  some  world  of  scorn 
and  indignation,  at  whose  borders  her  smiling  jurisdiction 
stopped. 

467 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"Xo  more  politics  !"  she  said  to  Tom  Scherer  when  he 
appeared  after  breakfast  the  morning  after  the  letter  had 
come  from  Mother  Joachim.  "I've  come  to  the  conclu 
sion  that  it's  bad  for  the  digestion  to  talk  bribery  and  cor 
ruption  night  after  night  till  the  small  hours." 

"  Your  digestion  ought  to  be  all  right.  You  deserted  us 
at  eleven  o'clock/' 

"I?     Oh  yes  ;  but  other  people— 

"  Never  know  when  to  go  home  ?" 

"It's  not  the  people  who  go  home  that  I  am  concerned 
about,  if  you'll  forgive  my  saying  so.  Ethan's  in  one  of  his 
moods  this  morning." 

"  What  sort  of  mood  ?"  asked  Scherer,  looking  into  the 
cloudless  face  of  the  young  wife.  "  Not  very  grim,  to 
judge  from  its  effect  on  yours." 

"  Oh,  very  grim  indeed."  As  Ethan  came  in  she  waved 
her  hand  and  made  a  little  mock  bow.  "  You  knew  him 
yesterday  as  His  Serene  Transparency,  to-day  Don  Inscrut 
able  Furioso  of  Grim  Tartary  ;  smokes  like  a  chimney,  and 
won't  say  a  word." 

Ethan  laughed  and  threw  his  cigarette  into  the  fire. 

"  Morning  !" 

"  Good-morning !  I  thought  before  I  went  to  the  office 
I'd  come  and  have  a  little  talk  with  you  about  that  piece  of 
property  out  by  Ely's  Farm." 

Val  glanced  through  the  window. 

"  Hi  there  !     Jack  and  Jill,  where  you  off  to  ?     Wait !" 

The  men  looked  out,  and  saw  two  small  chocolate-brown 
infants  precipitate  themselves  upon  Val.  She  sat  down  on 
the  grass  with  the  two  small  creatures  in  front  of  her,  and 
soon  had  them  rolling  about  and  squealing  with  merriment. 

"  Where  on  earth  did  she  find  those  pickaninnies  ?"  asked 
Scherer. 

"  Offspring  of  Venus  ;  little  sunburned,  that's  all." 

Val's  dog-cart  came  to  the  gate,  and  she  called  out  : 

"  Ethan,  come  and  mind  the  twins  while  I  get  my 
hat." 

He  came  out,  and  the  children  scuttled  at  sight  of  him. 

468 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  Do  smile  and  reassure  them/7  Val  said,  reproachfully. 
"  There  are  ways  of  looking  black  that  darkies  don't  mind, 
but —  Oh,  forgive  me  \"  She  caught  up  his  hand  and 
smiled  tenderly  at  him.  "  I  was  only  making  fun,  but  it 
was  stupid  fun.  I  don't  make  light  of  your  political  anxie 
ties,  but  life  must  go  on,  you  know,  and  we  must  smile — 
just  a  little."  She  ran  into  the  house  and  came  out  with 
hat  and  gloves.  "  Put  the  babies  into  the  cart,  Ethan. 
They're  coming  for  a  drive." 

The  black  children,  preternaturally  solemn  while  Ethan 
and  Scherer  lifted  them  in,  grinned  and  squealed  with  ex 
citement  the  moment  they  were  landed  by  the  side  of 
"  Miss  Val." 

"  Miss  Val  "  had  been  in  wild  spirits  since  she  opened  her 
eyes.  The  reaction  had  set  in.  After  those  days  of  vague, 
jealously  hidden  pain,  she  saw  at  hand  a  speedy  freedom 
from  the  burden  of  Julia's  presence. 

She  drove  the  fleet  little  Arab  madly  about  the  town 
"doing  errands,"  she  called  out  to  the  Halliwells  and 
others,  as  she  clattered  by  them  in  the  dog-cart,  with  her 
grinning  little  guests  breaking  into  shrieks  of  laughter  at 
each  jolt  and  every  sudden  turning  of  a  corner.  Val  bought 
them  oranges  and  sticks  of  candy.  One  of  her  "  errands" 
was  to  call  at  the  bank  for  Jerry,  who,  she  said,  alone  un 
derstood  how  to  make  the  perfection  of  a  swing.  She  must 
have  a  swing.  She  was  dying  for  a  swing.  It  was  so  silly 
to  give  up  delightful  things  just  because  children  found 
them  delightful  too.  And  old  Mr.  Otway  was  coaxed  to  let 
Jerry  come  back  in  the  cart. 

On  the  crooked  limb  of  the  catalpa-tree  they  rigged  up  a 
splendid  swing,  and  Jerry  stayed  to  luncheon. 

"I  won't  keep  you  after  three,"  his  old  playmate  said. 
"Ethan  and  I  are  working  at  Italian  from  three  till  four. 
But  come  back  this  evening,  and  receive  the  thanks  of  the 
assembled  community." 

After  Jerry  took  himself  off,  Ethan  and  she  went  into 
the  long  room  and  began  their  reading.  Usually  this 
hour  over  their  books  was  a  time  that  Ethan  seemed  frankly 

469 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

to  enjoy.  To-day,  in  spite  of  Val's  gay  good-humor,  he 
was  sometimes  languid  and  sometimes  nervously  alert.  He 
scolded  her  a  little  for  forgetting  a  rule  he  had  told  her  the 
day  before. 

"  Yes,  I'm  stupid  ;  forgive  me,"  she  said. 

Again,  towards  the  end  of  the  hour,  her  attention  wan 
dered,  remembering  joyously  that  she  was  going  abroad 
again. 

"  You  are  thinking  of  something  else,"  he  said,  looking 
at  her  almost  angrily. 

"Oh,  well,  I  won't." 

"  Yes,  but  you  do.  You  lose  half  the  good  of  learning 
a  new  language  if  it  doesn't  teach  you  to  concentrate.  Shut 
out  everything  else,"  he  said,  gravely.  "  It's  the  only  way." 

"  Yes,  yes,  I'll  be  much  better  next  time.  But  are  you 
loving  me  to-day  ?" 

He  dropped  the  book  like  one  whose  strength  is  spent. 
Then  he  leaned  over  the  arm  of  the  great  red  chair  and 
kissed  her,  holding  her  close,  clinging  to  her. 

"In  spite  of  my  sins,  are  you  loving  me  more  than  you 
did  yesterday  ?"  she  said,  smiling. 

"  Twenty-four  hours  more,"  he  answered,  seeming  to  fall 
in  with  her  mood. 

"All  that  much  more  ?" 

"All  that  much." 

"  What  are  we  going  to  do  to-day  after  lessons  ?"  She 
got  up  and  stood  before  him  with,  her  finger  in  her  book. 

"  Scherer  and  I  are  going  to  ride  out  to  Ely's  Farm  a 
little  after  four,  to  look  at  that  property.  You  had  better 
come,  too." 

"All  right.  But  what  makes  you  look  at  me  so — so — " 
She  dropped  her  book  and  perched  herself  on  his  knee. 
"'What  are  you  thinking  about  ?" 

"I  was  thinking  about  this  bit  of  Dante." 

"  No,  no  ;  it's  wicked  to  tell  lies.  You  don't  smile  to 
day  except  when  you  make  yourself.  What — are — you — • 
thinking — about  ?"  she  demanded. 

But  she  waited  in  vain.  He  seemed  to  forget  her  ques- 

470 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

tion — forget  her  presence.  She  put  one  arm  about  his 
neck,  and  lifting  her  other  hand  doubled,  she  knocked  at 
his  forehead. 

"Let  me  in — let  me  in,"  she  said. 

His  answer  was  to  crush  her  against  him,  and  hold  her 
so,  in  a  silence  that  was  broken  only  by  the  loud,  insistent 
ticking  of  the  tall  gilt  clock.  When  Val  spoke  again  it 
was  subdued  and  dreamily  : 

"Isn't  it  odd  how  much  we  sit  in  this  huge  old  chair  of 
hers  whenever  we're  here  alone  ?" 

"'It's  a  friendly  old  chair,"  he  answered,  putting  out  his 
foot  and  setting  it  in  motion.  "  Ev.er  since  the  far  back 
times  when  I  was  rocked  to  sleep  in  it,  and  made  to  forget 
Yaffti  and  all  the  spectres  and  the  hurts  of  childhood" — 
his  voice  was  sweet  and  lulling — "  the  old  chair  has  been  a 
haven." 

"  It  was  more  of  a  judgment-seat  to  me,"  she  said,  and 
it  crossed  her  mind  that  it  must  be  near  the  anniversary  of 
the  day  her  grandmother  had  died. 

She  mustn't  forget  that  date  as  she  did  all  others ;  her 
whole  life  long  she  meant  to  remember  that  day,  to  keep  it 
holy  with  special  remembrance  and  with  flowers,  and  some 
little  deed  of  the  kind  she  would  have  liked — done  in 
memoriam.  She  lifted  her  head  from  Ethan's  shoulder 
and  looked  for  the  calendar.  It  always  hung  on  a  brass 
nail  beside  the  fireplace.  It  had  been  there  three  or  four 
days  ago,  she  was  sure.  She  sat  thinking  this,  with  her 
head  turned  away  from  her  husband,  and  then,  while  she 
speculated  as  to  the  calendar's  whereabouts,  another  por 
tion  of  her  brain  was  thinking  idly  : 

"Why  doesn't  he  draw  me  back  into  his  arms  as  he  al 
ways  does,  and  say,  '  Don't  be  such  a  restless  creature'? 
He  sees  I'm  looking  for  something  ;  why  doesn't  he  ask  for 
what  ?"  And  then  a  sudden,  formless  presentiment  seized 
her.  "It  must  be  because  he  knows.  Why  should  he  have 
guessed  just  that  ?  Had  he  taken  the  calendar  away  him 
self  ?  Why  should  he  ?  What  was  the  date  ?" 

Like  a  blow  between  the  eyes  came  the  knowledge  and 

471 


THE    OI'KN    QUESTION 

awakening.  As  if  it  had  actually  come  in  the  form  of  a  blow 
from  a  fist,  she  shut  her  dazed  eyes,  and  saw  the  blackness 
sown  with  stars.  But  for  that  closing  of  the  eyes,  no  muscle 
had  she  moved.  She  had  indeed  lost  track  of  time.  Her  in 
eradicable  failing  there  had  made  forgetfulness  possible  ; 
the  time  of  painful  preoccupation  about  Julia  had  made  it 
easy  ;  the  last  days  of  all-absorbing  gladness  had  made  it 
sure.  She  did  the  mental  sum  again  and  again.  Yes,  it 
was  September  16.  To-morrow  was  the  anniversary  of  Mrs. 
Gano's  death.  Yesterday  was  the  last  day  of  the  old  life 
for  Val.  To-day  the  bolt  had  fallen.  But  had  it— had  it? 
Had  she  not  lived  through  moments  like  this  before  ?  In 
those  first  months — yes  ;  but  then  she  had  taken  Time  and 
Fear  by  the  forelock.  To-day  she  was  far  behind. 

It  was  strange  to  herself  how  all  her  dreads — physical 
shrinking  and  mental  anguish  —  focused  in  the  fear  of 
reading  Ethan's  consciousness  in  his  face.  If  blindness 
could  only  come  upon  her,  if  only  she  could  escape  seeing 
the  knowledge  in  the  face  she  loved,  she  would,  she  knew, 
escape  the  sharpest  pang  of  all. 

What  was  he  thinking  now  of  her  long  immobility  ? 
Why  didn't  he  speaker  move  ?  What  need  ?  Why  should 
they  look  each  other  in  the  face  ?  She  felt  his  eyes  on  her 
back,  and  a  shiver  ran  between  her  shoulder-blades.  Those 
eyes  of  his,  how  she  dreaded  them  !  They  pierced  through 
to  the  brain.  They  looked  into  her  heart  and  watched  it 
as  it  shrank,  showing  her  the  while  that,  whatever  she  en 
dured,  his  agony  was  more. 

She  bowed  her  head  down  over  her  knees.  He  gathered 
her  up  as  if  she  had  been  a  little  child,  and  rocked  her 
dumbly  in  his  arms.  They  sat  so  for  a  moment,  each  hid 
ing  the  face  from  the  other.  A  loud  resounding  blow  upon 
the  knocker  made  them  start  apart. 

"The  summons  !"  he  thought. 

And  that  morning  in  the  attic  came  back  to  him  when, 
as  a  child,  he  glowed  with  excitement  and  pride  to  find  the 
old  brass  knocker  bearing  his  own  name. 

Val  had  kept  her  back  turned  when  she  started  up,  and 

472 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

was  standing  now  before  the  window  looking  into  the  street. 
The  horses  were  at  the  door.  Ethan  went  out.  She  heard 
him  speaking  with  Scherer,  and  Scherer's  voice  saying  : 

"  Julia  will  be  round  in  five  minutes/' 

Val  fled  up-stairs  and  locked  the  door.  She  heard  her 
husband  coming  up,  and  listened  breathless — Scherer,  too  ! 
A  light  knock  on  her  door  as  they  passed,  and  Ethan's 
voice  : 

"Don't  be  long  getting  ready,  dear." 

He  never  said  "dear"  to  her  before  people. 

"No  ;  I  won't  be  long,"  she  heard  herself  answer. 

She  tore  off  her  house-gown  and  hurried  on  her  habit. 
She  must  be  down  first.  If  she  were  not,  she  felt  she 
couldn't  go,  and  since  he  was  going — 

When  she  got  down  to  the  gate  the  only  person  in  sight 
was  Julia,  drawing  rein  by  the  new  white  mounting-block 
at  the  gate.  Calling  to  the  gardener:  "Tell  Mr.  Gano 
we've  gone  on  before,"  Val  mounted  her  horse.  "I'll  race 
you  to  the  Maple  Grove,"  she  cried,  and  set  off  at  a  gallop, 
Julia  following. 

Val  reached  the  goal  first,  and  rode  back  nearly  half  a 
mile  to  propose  a  shorter  contest.  Then  another  and  an 
other,  till  the  men  caught  them  up.  They,  too,  seemed  to 
have  a  fancy  for  hard  riding,  and  when  they  reached  Ely's 
Farm  the  four  horses  were  in  a  foam. 

They  went  over  Scherer's  property  while  it  was  light,  and 
had  a  nondescript  meal  afterwards  at  the  farm. 

On  the  way  home  she  heard  her  husband  telling  Scherer 
he  must  come  back  with  them  and  get  a  book  Ethan  had 
promised  him  in  the  morning.  They  left  Julia  at  her 
o-ate.  When  Ethan  lifted  Val  down  from  her  horse  he 

& 

whispered  : 

"  I  may  walk  back  with  Scherer  after  we've  had  a  smoke. 
Don't  wait  up  for  me  ...  go  to  sleep,  darling." 

She  clung  to  him  an  instant  in  the  dark,  and  then  went 
in-doors.  Her  maid  was  waiting  for  her  up-stairs. 

"  A  bath,"  said  her  mistress  ;  "  I'm  very  hot  and  dusty." 

The  warm  water  refreshed  and  revived  her.  She  put  on 

473 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

her  long  bine  dressing-gown  of  soft  nnrustling  silk.  She 
saw  with  the  old  pleasure  how  white  and  shapely  her  arms 
showed  when  she  lifted  her  hands  to  her  hair,  the  wide 
open  sleeves  falling  back  almost  to  the  shoulder.  She  un 
coiled  the  long  brown  braids,  and  let  the  hair  flow  loose. 

"Something  to  read,  ma'am,  before  I  go?"  asked  the 
prim  foreign  maid,  placing  the  shaded  lamp  on  the  table 
by  the  fire  and  drawing  up  the  arm-chair. 

"No;  that's  all." 

Val  sat  there  alone,  before  the  fire,  till  twelve  o'clock  ; 
then,  lighting  a  candle,  she  went  to  the  head  of  the  stair 
and  listened.  N~o  sound.  He  had  gone  back  with  Scherer ; 
he  must  surely  come  soon.  A  sudden  noise,  a  sound  like 
the  shutting  of  the  gate.  She  flew  back  to  her  room.  On 
an  uncontrollable  impulse  she  shut  and  locked  the  door, 
and  put  out  candle  and  lamp.  Had  he  come  that  moment 
she  would  have  feigned  sleep.  But  it  was  a  false  alarm. 
Presently  she  relit  the  candle,  opened  the  door,  and  stood 
listening.  Slowly  she  went  down-stairs,  peering  over  the 
banisters,  trailing  her  blue  draperies  from  room  to  room, 
her  hand  about  the  candle-flame  and  her  wide  eyes  intent. 

"Looking  for  what?  God  knows.  It  must  be  Ethan 
I'm  looking  for.  Why  doesn't  he  come?  I'm  to  'sleep' 
— to  sleep  !" 

She  went  to  the  front  door  and  opened  it.  The  night 
smelt  fresh  and  pungent.  The  scent  of  the  first  falling 
leaves  filled  the  air. 

"  Yes,"  she  said  to  herself,  "  it's  the  time  of  the  year 
when  things  happen." 

The  heavy  burnished  knocker  caught  the  candle  gleam, 
and  she  laid  her  hot  forehead  against  the  cool  brass. 

"  lie  came,  first,  on  such  a  night.  Aiid  she  went  away 
from  us  two  years  ago  to-morrow — no,  it's  to-day." 

She  came  in  and  shut  the  door,  but  some  one  had  entered 
with  her.  Val  stood  a  moment  in  the  silent  hall,  quite 
still.  The  dead  woman  seemed  to  have  come  back  from 
her  grave.  The  quiet  house  was  full  of  her.  Val  stood 
before  the  long  room  door,  and  almost  before  she  realized 

474 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

what  she  was  doing,  she  had  lifted  her  hand  and  knocked. 
Smiling  faintly,  she  went  in.  In  that  dim  light  it  was  all 
just  as  it  used  to  be.  The  only  reason  she  couldn't  see  the 
figure  in  the  great  crimson  chair  was  that  the  high  back 
concealed  the  judge  and  comforter  sitting  there. 

Val  set  the  candle  down,  and,  for  the  first  time  since  the 
blow  had  fallen,  she  felt  the  rush  of  tears  filling  her  wide 
strained  eyes.  They  blurred  the  dim  outlines  of  things, 
but,  with  hands  out-stretched,  she  went  towards  the  empty 
chair  like  one  praying  help  and  succor.  At  the  side  she 
knelt  down  and  laid  her  cheek  on  the  arm,  crying  noise 
lessly,  remembering  other  days  and  other  pains,  but  never 
before  this  stark  denial  of  all  comfort.  How  good  it  had 
been,  as  a  child,  to  feel  the  light  hand  on  her  hair  !  Ah  ! 
the  hand  was  lighter  now.  "Well,  and  so  will  the  hearts 
of  her  children  be,  when  they're  dust,"  she  said  to  herself, 
and  rose  up.  She  looked  into  the  parlor.  Daniel  Boone, 
his  hunters  and  his  dogs,  and  before  the  big  painting  a 
picture  etched  on  the  air  of  a  wild  little  girl  with  long  fly 
ing  hair,  dancing  in  the  dusk,  until  a  fear  fell  on  her  that 
struck  the  quicksilver  out  of  her  veins  and  hung  her  limbs 
with  lead.  On  the  other  side  of  the  room  was  the  new 
grand-piano  that  had  come  too  late. 

The  Ethan  of  ten  years  ago  stood  in  the  corner  with  his 
hands  on  a  girFs  shoulders,  saying  "Promise!"  And  the 
girl  sang  no  more. 

She  went  on  from  room  to  room  as  if  still  looking  for 
that  something  she  had  lost.  Up  -  stairs  again  —  into  the 
room  that  had  been  her  father's  long  ago,  her  husband's 
now,  and  full  of  the  impress  of  his  spirit.  His  pictures, 
his  books — it  was  the  one  room  in  the  house  wholly,  utter 
ly  changed,  in  atmosphere  and  outward  seeming.  In  the 
corner  of  the  red  damask  lounge  by  the  fire,  a  little  old 
book.  She  picked  it  up.  Seneca  !  She  hadn't  seen  it 
since  that  day  two  years  ago  on  the  river,  when  he  refused 
to  translate  the  passage  he  had  marked.  She  would 
take  it  away  and  spell  out  for  herself  those  things  in  the 
marked  book  that  had  marked  the  soul  of  the  man  she 

475 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

loved.  A  large  empty  envelope,  folded  double,  had  fallen 
out.  It  bore  the  stamp  of  the  Xavy  Department,  and 
the  Washington  postmark.  A  memorandum  in  pencil  in 
Ethan's  fine  handwriting:  "Army  contracts  —  fight  cor 
ruption."  On  the  other  side  some  verses. 

Ah  !  he  was  beginning  to  write  again.  No ;  there  was 
an  unfamiliar  name  at  the  end.  Still,  what  was  it  that  he 
had  taken  the  trouble  to  copy  ? 

"Be  still,  my  sou!,  be  still ;  the  arms  yon  bear  are  brittle, 

Earth  and  high  heaven  are  fixt  of  old  and  founded  strong. 
Think,  rather — call  to  thought,  if  now  you  grieve  a  little, 
The  days  when  we  had  rest,  oh  soul,  for  they  were  long. 

"Men  loved  unkindness  then,  but  lightless  in  the  quarry 

I  slept  and  saw  not  ;   tears  fell  down,  I  did  not  mourn  ; 
Sweat  ran,  and  blood  sprang  out,  and  I  was  never  sorry  : 
Then  it  was  well  with  me,  in  days  ere  I  was  born. 

"  Now,  and  I  muse  for  why,  and  never  find  the  reason, 

I  pace  the  earth,  and  drink  the  air,  and  feel  the  sun. 
Be  still,  be  still,  my  soul — it  is  but  for  a  season  ; 
Let  us  endure  an  hour  and  see  injustice  done. 

"Ay,  look!   high  heaven  and  earth  ail  from  the  prime  foundation; 

All  thoughts  to  writhe  the  heart  are  here,  and  all  are  vain  : 
Horror  and  scorn  and  hate  and  fear  and  indignation— 
Oh,  why  did  I  awake  ?    When  shall  I  sleep  again  ?"* 

She  looked  up  and  saw  her  husband  standing  at  the 
door.  With  a  cry  she  let  fall  paper  and  candle,  and  fled 
into  his  arms. 

"My  dear,  my  dear!'7  he  whispered,  trying  to  soothe 
her.  They  stood  there  locked  in  each  other's  arms  while 
the  minutes  went  by.  At  last,  "Help  me  to  find  the  can 
dle/'  she  said,  faintly,  and  as  they  both  went  towards  the 
tireless  grate,  groping  and  stooping  to  feel  about  the  floor, 
"  Perhaps  we  should  rather  try  to  get  used  to  the  dark," 
she  said  ;  and  he,  with  breaking  heart,  caught  at  her,  cry 
ing  hoarsely  : 

*  By  permission,  from  A  Shropshire  Lad,  by  A.  E  Housman. 
476 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  Val !  Val !  I  can't  bear  it  I" 

"Til  help  you,  dear." 

"I  can't  let  you  die." 

"Isn't  it  strange  ?— everybody's  said  that  who  has  loved 
some  one.  And  where  are  they  all  ?" 

"But  yon  are  so  young."  They  had  reached  the  sofa  in 
the  dark,  and  sat  there  locked  together. 

"Yes,  thank  Heaven,  we're  young."  She  pressed  her 
face  against  his  wet  cheek.  "Ah  !  don't  be  so  terribly  un 
happy,  dear.  To  die  !  —  why,  that's  the  most  wonderful 
of  all." 


CHAPTER  XXXIV 

IN  her  own  room  —  Valeria's  old  blue  room  —  she  stood 
late  the  next  evening,  in  her  night-gown,  before  the  fire 
place. 

"Well,  Mazeppa,  we've  had  a  good  ruiTfor  it;  but  it's 
ill -going  when  one's  bound  —  and  when  death  follows." 
Only  her  lips  stirred  at  the  opening  of  the  door.  "That 
yoiC  Ethan  ?" 

He  came  in  and  shut  the  door  behind  him. 

"  These  things  I  ordered  for  yon  in  Paris  came  this 
morning,"  he  said,  speaking  very  low. 

"  What  are  they  ?"  she  asked,  still  staring  at  the  bas-relief. 

'•'A  turquoise  girdle  for  your  beautiful  white  body,  and 
a  turquoise  comb  for  your  hair." 

"Oh,  beautiful!  beautiful!"  she  said,  as  he,  standing 
behind  her,  held  the  things  across  her  shoulder  before  her 
eyes;  "but  beautiful  beyond  anything!"  She  took  them 
in  her  hands.  "It  was  dear  of  you—  She  stopped  as 
she  glanced  over  her  shoulder  and  saw  the  look  in  his 
eyes.  Her  own  went  down  before  them,  and  slowly  filled, 
but  no  tear  fell.  With  an  effort  she  seemed  to  force  the 
salt-water  drops  back  to  their  deep  well.  When  she  spoke, 
it  was  in  a  tone  deliberately  quiet,  even  every-day  :  "  You 
say  I've  always  counted  so  serenely  on  being  happy  ;  you 
don't  know  how  I've  dreaded  getting  to  be  too  old  to  wear 
pale  blue."  She  fondled  the  stones  of  the  girdle  and  laid 
the  heart-shaped  clasp  against  her  cheek. 

He  watched  her  woman  -  joy  in  jewels  with  a  look  of 
hardness. 

"  It  would  take  more  than  mere  years  to  cure  you  of 
your  passion  for  turquoise." 

478 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  That  was  what  I've  been  afraid  of."  She  was  smiling. 
"  I  should  never  have  been  able  to  resist  pretty  bine  things." 

How  yonng  she  looked  in  her  straight  white  gown  and 
loosened  hair  ! 

""What  a  baby  you  are,  after  all,"  he  said,  thinking  that 
those  eyes  of  hers  seemed  to  have  caught,  or  kept,  no  re 
flection  of  the  glare  of  life.  His  own  were  hot  and  blood 
shot,  hers  seemed  always  to  have  looked  down  on  the  pale 
cool  blue  of  turquoises,  or  up  to  the  blue  of  heaven. 

She  had  nodded  when  he  accused  her  of  being  a  baby. 

"And  it's  all  very  well  to  be  a  baby  with  brown  hair 
and  smooth  forehead  ;  but  a  gray-haired,  wrinkled  baby, 
dressed  in  baby -blue!  It's  just  as  well  to  be  delivered 
from  that." 

"  Upon  my  soul  !"  He  stared  at  her  with  his  strained, 
sleepless  eyes.  "You've  no  sooner  wrenched  your  mind 
away  from  this  joy  in  life,  than  you  fall  to  setting  up  a 
new  shrine  where  you  may  worship  Death,  and  give  him 
thanks  and  praise." 

"You  think/  make  a  god  of  Death?"  she  said,  very 
low.  "If  I  do,  it's  only  a  new  form  of  'Thy  gods  shall  be 
my  gods/  If  I've  thrown  away  the  old  idols,  it's  not  be 
cause  they  failed  me,  but  because  they  failed  you.  I  have 
more  need  of  you  than  I  have  of  them  ;  I  cannot  leave  you 
to  go  and  kneel  apart." 

"  Shall  it  be  here  ?"  she  asked. 

"Here?     No." 

"I  think  I'd  rather  it  were  here — where  for  me  it  all 
began." 

"No,  no  ;  not  where  she  lived." 

"  You  think  she'd  come  back  and  interfere  ?" 

He  studied  her  face,  wondering  a  little.  "  She  might 
interfere  without  coming  back,  if  we  stayed  here." 

"Besides,  to  stay  here  would  be  to  waste  time.  We 
must  go  and  see  countries  we  have  never  seen  before." 

"  Yes,  and  the  journey's  end  must  be  far  away  from  any 
place  where  we  are  known." 

479 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  Why  ?" 

"  Why  should  we  shock  people  ?" 

"But  it's  bound  to  shock  people/' 

"No,  that's  a  popular  fallacy.  If  I  hear  a  stranger  in 
the  street  saying  that  some  one,  a  stranger  to  us  both,  took 
his  life  a  little  while  ago  in  the  opposite  house,  I  am  slight 
ly  disturbed,  perhaps,  at  having  the  mask  men  wear  pushed 
away  for  a  moment ;  but  I  continue  my  walk,  I  eat  my 
dinner  as  usual." 

"  How  shall  it  be,  then,  so  that  our  friends  shall  continue 
their  walks  and  eat  their  dinners  ?" 

"  Somewhere  a  long  way  from  here— 

"Yes,  yes  ;  we'll  go  to  the  Far  East — we'll  go  to  the  end 
of  the  world." 

"Yes,  to  the  end  of  the  world." 

"And  then  it  will  be  quite  easy,  when  we've  come  to  the 
end,  just  to  step  off." 

"Quite  easy." 

Val  busied  herself  unceasingly  in  the  preparations  for 
going  the  long  journey.  Ethan  looked  on  at  her  calmness 
and  activity  with  growing  wonder.  His  first  sense  of  re 
volt  and  horror  was  little  by  little  merged  in  mere  incre 
dulity,  then  rank  suspicion. 

"Is  her  acquiescence  genuine,  complete  ?"  he  tormented 
himself  with  thinking,  and  then  scourged  his  doubting 
spirit  for  foul  unfaith. 

Still,  no  self-reproach  could  rid  him  quite  of  his  mental 
attitude  of  jailer  watching,  argus-eyed,  over  a  prisoner 
whose  resourcefulness  might  any  day  or  night  find  sudden 
ly  a  way  to  freedom. 

Life  during  these  days  of  setting  her  house  in  order 
went  on  with  a  regularity,  an  outward  tranquillity,  that 
would  have  made  a  less  sceptical  soul  than  Ethan's  pause 
and  wonder.  It  was  not  Val  who  refused  to  see  their  few 
friends. 

"Ethan  is  very  busy."  "Ethan  is  writing."  "He's  so 
sorry  he  can't  join  us  to-day  ;  but  Fll  go  with  you,"  etc. 

480 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

These  were  the  fragments  that  floated  tip-stairs  from  the 
hall,  or  through  his  curtained  windows  from  the  gate.  So 
little  did  Val  seem  unnerved  or  pain  absorbed,  he  was  sure 
that  she  was  more  friendly  to  her  friends  than  ever,  more 
mindful  of  them.  He  watched  with  wonder  her  childish 
pleasure  in  making  little  farewell  presents. 

"  Nobody  is  forgotten,  I  think,"  she  said,  looking  with 
outward  content  at  a  table  piled  with  labelled  packages. 

Ethan  in  his  heart  was  saying:  "All  this  looks  like  a 
genuine  leave-taking,  all  but  her  own  face,  her  even,  un- 
jarred  voice,  her  unfrightened  eyes." 

"  This  is  what  I'm  best  pleased  about."  She  took  up  the 
long  envelope  with  the  papers  referring  to  Venus's  cottage, 
which  had  been  settled  on  that  faithful  servant  for  life, 
and  was  afterwards  to  go  to  the  twins.  "  Grandma  would 
have  been  glad  about  this." 

"  What  are  you  doing  with  all  her  things  ?"  Ethan  asked, 
with  restless  dark  eyes  searching  her  face  for  weakness  or 
for  subterfuge.  "  Those  things  you  are  giving  away  seem 
all  to  be  yours." 

"  Yes,  all  yours  and  mine." 

"  And  what  of  hers  ?" 

She  shook  her  head  vaguely. 

"You'll  have  to  sell  them." 

"  Never  !  never  !" 

His  eyes  gleamed.     Was  he  on  the  track  ? 

"  Other  people  will  sell  them  if  you  don't." 

Her  face  clouded. 

"  I've  already  given  away  a  great  many  household  things, 
to  Emmie's  poor  people,  and  others  Venus  has  told  me 
about." 

"And  the  rest?" 

"I  hear  Julia." 

"She  won't  come  up  here." 

"She  may." 

He  hastened  to  secure  the  door.  Val  ran  out  and  met 
Julia  at  the  top  of  the  stair.  Ethan  listened  to  the  greet 
ing,  and  heard  Julia  say  : 

2n  481 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

'•Why,  Val!" 

-What  is  it?" 
"  It's  true,  then  ?" 
"What?" 

Val's  voice  rang  quick  and  anxious. 
"You  are  nicer  to  me  these  last  few  days." 
"Oh,  do  you  think  so  ?" 
Relief  breathed  through  every  syllable. 
"Don't  you  realize  that,  until  just  now,  you   haven't 
kissed  me  since  —  " 

"Sh  !     Let's  go  down  ;  we  mustn't  disturb  Ethan." 

That  evening,  while  Ethan  sat  smoking  and  writing  let 
ters  in  his  room,  Val  got  up  from  the  sofa  where  she  was 


"Where  are  you  going?"  he  said,  without  turning 
round. 

"Down-stairs.     I'll  be  back  by-and-by." 

"Come  here." 

She  stood  beside  him.  He  leaned  back  in  his  chair  look 
ing  at  her  till  she  put  her  hand  over  his  eyes. 

"  Don't  !  don't  !"  she  whispered,  leaning  her  cheek  on  his 
hair. 

lie  put  his  two  hands  round  the  little  waist,  touching 
the  turquoises  in  her  belt. 

"Who  is  to  have  this  —  afterwards  ?"  he  said. 

She  stood  up  straight. 

"You  didn't  think  I  would  give  that  away?" 

"Well  —       His  air  puzzled  her. 

"Would  you  be  content,"  she  said,  "to  think  of  any 
one  else  wearing  it  ?" 

"  Content  !  But  sometimes  it's  hard  to  believe  you  are 
facing  the  thought  of  laying  it  aside." 

She  flushed  under  his  look. 

••'  I  don't  know  that  I  shall  lay  it  aside." 

While  he  stared  she  went  out  of  the  room,  shutting  the 
door. 

He  sat  for  a  moment,  following  up  first  one  train  and 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

then  the  other  suggested  by  her  speech,  till  he  had  con 
vinced  himself  finally  that  the  explanation  of  these  last 
days  lay  in  the  fact  that  she  was  not  facing  the  compact. 
She  would  elude  it.  He  started  to  his  feet.  It  was  as  if 
he  had  been  brought  face  to  face  with  proof  of  wifely  infi 
delity. 

He  found  her  in  the  long  room  kneeling  before  the  open 
escritoire. 

"  What  are  you  doing  ?" 

"Getting  ready,"  she  said. 

He  sat  down  in  the  great  chair  and  watched  her.  She 
carried  handfuls  of  yellowed  papers  and  bundles  of  letters, 
and  heaped  them  on  the  bed  of  red  coal  in  the  grate.  She 
tore  the  morocco  binding  off  old  diaries  and  burned  the 
manuscript  leaves. 

"What  are  you  doing?"  he  reiterated,  starting  up  like 
one  shaking  off  a  dream. 

"  She  always  said  she'd  rather  things  were  burned  than 
pulled  about  by  careless  hands,  by  strangers." 

"'I  remember."  He  sat  down.  This  did  not  look  like 
evasion,  for  Val  shared  his  own  strong  sentiment  for  family 
things.  "I  remember,  too,"  he  said,  with  dull  regret, 
"she  used  to  tell  me  'the  whole  history  of  a  family  is  lock 
ed  up  in  that  escritoire/' 

"  It  takes  a  long  time  to  burn." 

She  stirred  the  slow-smouldering  papers  to  a  blaze. 

"  It  took  a  hundred  years  to  make,"  he  said ;  "  and  many 
hundred  agonies — and  joys,"  he  added,  watching  her  dim 
smile — "yes,  and  joys." 

He  helped  her  with  the  next  load,  looking  at  the  writing 
)ii  the  outside  of  the  letter-bundles  as  he  undid  them. 

"  Grandfather  Gano,"  he  said,  throwing  a  handful  on  the 
fire.  "Your  father" — another  handful.  "Aunt  Valeria" 
— another.  "  Grand  in — 

"  Don't,"  cried  Val,  with  quivering  face  ;  "you  mustn't 
call  their  names  !"  He  looked  back  at  her.  "  It's  like  call 
ing  them  to  look  at  the  way  we  treat  the  things  they  left 
us." 

483 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

He  went  on  silently  with  his  task.  There  was  no  doubt 
she  felt  it  keenly;  why  do  it,  then ?  Only  out  of  shrinking 
from  those  "stranger"  hands.  Then  she  was  facing  the 
compact,  after  all. 

"Ethan?" 

'•Yes." 

"  Why  do  yon  stay  here  ?" 

"Because  the  time's  so  short." 

"Dear  one" — she  came  and   leaned  against  him — "go 

O  O 

and  finish  your  writing  ;  I'll  come  back  in  an  hour." 

"No,  I'll  stay  here  till  you've  done." 

"Oh,  I  sha'n't  have  done  all  for  several  days,"  she  said, 
pleading. 

But  she  knew  that  look  in  his  face.  No  use  to  urge. 
She  turned  away,  and  scattered  the  charred  paper  down  on 
to  the  hearth  among  the  journal  bindings.  He  made  the 
fire  up  again  for  her.  Then,  one  by  one,  she  took  from  the 
mantelpiece  all  the  old  photographs  of  her  husband,  and 
laid  them  on  the  flame — all  but  the  one  of  the  baby  Ethan, 
which  she  thrust  in  her  dress,  keeping  her  face  hidden  from 
her  husband.  Then  she  went  over  to  a  pile  of  pictures  he 
had  not  noticed  before,  lying  by  the  buffet. 

She  took  a  little  hammer  with  a  claw  handle  out  of 
the  drawer,  and  bent  over  the  frames,  loosening  the  nails, 
taking  out  the  pictures  and  tearing  them  up. 

"What  are  those  ?" 

"  Aunt  Valeria's— " 

"Why  do  you  bother  with  them  ?" 

"1  don't  want  people  to  be  smiling  at  them.  Oh, 
Ethan,"  she  cried  out  with  the  sharpness  of  intolerable 
pain,  "  I— I  can't  bear  it,  if  you  sit  there  watching  mo  !  I 
can  do  it  alone  almost  callously,  thinking  very  little  of  them, 
thinking  about  you  and  me,  till  all  these  poor  reminders 
are  just  old  paper  ;  but  you —  She  hid  her  face. 

"  They  are  just  old  paper,  dear." 

He  went  over  to  her,  and  she  turned  from  him,  trem 
bling. 

"No,  no  ;  when  you  are  here,  they  all  come  alive  in  my 

484 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

hands.  Oh-h-h  !"  She  lifted  her  tear-wet  face,  and  held 
up  clasped  hands  like  one  praying  pardon.  "  You  were 
right ;  they  are  a  hundred  agonies,  they  cry  out  while  I  tear 
and  burn  them." 

"No,  dear,  no  ;  the  dead  are  done  with  crying." 

"But  these  people — "  She  looked  up  and  down  the 
long  room  with  misty  eyes,  like  one  dimly  descrying  a 
throng.  "  They  aren't  dead,  Ethan." 

A  sharp  fear  seized  him  that  the  strain  had  been  too 
much. 

"  Come — come  away,"  he  said. 

But  she  clung  to  the  great  brass  ring  in  the  lion's  mouth 
on  the  buffet  drawer.  "They  won't  really  die  till  we  have 
destroyed  all  their  work — and  destroyed  ourselves." 

"That's  true  in  a  sense/'  he  murmured. 

"Of  course  it's  true.  Does  anybody  think  my  grand 
mother  died  when  the  breath  went  out  of  her  body  ?  She 
won't  really  die  till  the  last  person  dies  who  remembers 
her.  And  the  others  ;  here  they've  been  all  these  years, 
kept  tenderly  alive,  in  letters,  in  wills  and  certificates, 
diaries,  poor  little  pictures  !"  Her  voice  wavered  and  re 
covered  itself  fiercely.  "  Shall  I  tell  you  what  it's  like,  de 
stroying  these  things  ?"  She  broke  into  wild  weeping. 
"All  these  are  like  hands  clinging  on  to  life.  I  wrench 
their  fingers  away ;  I  force  them  down.  The  glimpses  1 
have  of  them — it's  like  the  last  look  on  drowning  faces." 

"Yal,"  he  said,  hoarsely,  "there's  time  yet.  Suppose 
we  don't  shirk  our  trust.  Suppose  we  hold  the  Fort  for 
the  Ganos  as  long  as  ever  we  can." 

She  took  his  handkerchief  out  of  his  pocket  and  wiped 
away  her  tears,  but  they  flowed  and  flowed  afresh. 

"An  understanding  like  ours,"  he  said,  hurriedly,  "may 
be  superseded  —  wiped  out  by  a  better  understanding." 
With  an  eagerness  that  seemed  strange  to  himself,  he  tried 
to  soothe  and  reassure  her. 

His  heart  shrank  at  her  unlighted  look. 

"Do  you  hear,  Val  ?  We  are  not  so  primitive  that  we 
must  make  a  fetich  of  our  compact." 

485 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  I'm  very  primitive,  dear ;  you  told  me  so  yourself." 

He  loosed  his  hold  upon  her  with  a  sinking  sense  of  hav 
ing  done  something  he  could  never  quite  undo.  Feeling 
his  arms  no  longer  about  her,  she  looked  up. 

"Poor  darling!"  she  said,  framing  the  dark  face  in  her 
two  hands  ;  "  I  didn't  mean  to  cry  and  unnerve  you.  But 
it  wasn't  for  me  I  cried — not  even  for  you.  You  ought  to 
forgive  me  that  a  few  tears  fell,  just  this  once,  over  those 
other  graves  that  nobody  will  ever  remember  any  more." 

He  stared  down  at  her,  seeing  how  unmoved  his  words 
had  left  her. 

"  Haven't  you  heard  what  I've  been  saying  to  you,  dear  ?" 

"  What  was  it  ?"  she  said,  wearily,  putting  out  her  hand 
to  take  up  another  of  the  faded  water-colors.  He  caught 
the  hand,  lifted  her  in  his  arms,  and  carried  her  to  the  big 
chair.  He  sat,  holding  her  against  him,  thinking  how  he 
should  put  it  to  her — this  new,  this  growing  sense  of  his, 
that  the  family  will  to  live  was  stronger  than  his  individual 
will  to  die,  and  that  there  was  justification  in  this  realiza 
tion  for  a  different  compact.  He  sat  weighing  the  chances 
of  the  new  life,  trying  for  Val's  sake  to  find  loop-holes  of 
escape  from  the  prison  he  himself  had  builded,  for  Val's 
sake  coercing  himself  to  face  payment  of  the  long  penalty 
of  life  and  guilty  fatherhood  ;  in  Val's  name  even  trying  to 
think  all  might  still  be  well. 

He  looked  down  at  the  face  on  his  breast,  and  saw  that 
for  the  moment  all  was  well  without  his  troubling.  Yul 
had  cried  herself  to  sleep. 

Instead  of  being  glad,  he  was  conscious  of  an  absurd  irri 
tation.  She  could  sleep,  then  ! 

Covertly  he  watched  her  the  next  morning,  thinking 
with  surprise  : 

"Yes,  even  in  the  broad  daylight  and  away  from  the 
haunted  long  room,  I'm  of  last  night's  opinion  still.  It 
doesn't  matter  about  me — for  her  sake  I  must  go  on." 

"Come  and  sit  on  the  terrace,"  he  said,  when  she  was 
leaving  the  breakfast-room. 

486 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"Oh,  dearest,  not  now." 

"  Why  not  ?" 

"  I — Fm  a  house-keeper,  you  know.  I  have  many  things 
to  do  in  the  morning." 

'•'I  give  you  ten  minutes  by  my  watch  to  order  dinner/' 

"  Ethan,  if  you  never  leave  me  to  myself,  I — I  can't  get 
ready/' 

He  put  his  arm  through  hers,  and  led  her  out  by  the  ve 
randa  down  to  the  second  terrace.  The  servant  was  spread 
ing  a  Navajo  blanket  on  the  ground,  under  the  catalpa- 
tree.  Val  sat  down  on  the  barbaric  colored  rug,  and  watched 
Ethan  walking  to  and  fro  on  the  edge  of  the  terrace.  When 
they  were  alone 

"Did  you  misunderstand  me  yesterday,  that  you  talk 
again  to-day  of  getting  ready  ?" 

"No,  I  understood — I  understood  that  because  I  cried 
you  were  ready  to  let  me  break  the  compact  if  I  wanted 
to." 

He  had  never  heard  such  contempt  in  her  voice.  He 
stopped  and  looked  at  her.  Her  face  was  strangely  hard. 

"Not  because  you  cried,  but  because  I  see  the  matter 
from  another — I  think  better — point  of  view/' 

She  shook  her  head. 

"You're  deceiving  yourself  because  of  me." 

Her  words  angered  him  unaccountably. 

"  I  should  have  thought  it  natural  that  any  woman,  espe 
cially  one  of  your  temperament,  would  have  welcomed  the 
suggestion." 

"As  if  I  didn't  know  it!" 

"Know  what?" 

"  That  you've  been  looking  out  hour  by  hour,  minute  by 
minute,  to  see  if  I  wasn't  showing  the  white  flag." 

In  his  sense  of  being  convicted,  he  was  ready  to  curse  her 
keenness. 

"Do  you  know,  it  strikes  me  you  have  no  inkling  of  the 
mother-sense  ?" 

"That's  part  of  my  luck,"  she  said,  doggedly. 

"You  don't  want  to  keep  to  the  first  compact?" 

487 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  Of  course  I  do  ;  I  shall  keep  to  it." 

"No,"  ho  said,  quietly. 

She  started,  clasped  and  unclasped  her  hands. 

"You  are  only  tempting  us,"  she  said.  "It  may  look 
for  a  moment  like  a  possible  thing — it  isn't." 

"  It  is  perfectly  possible  if  we  are  not  superstitious.  The 
new  claim  brings  a  new  insight,  a  new  wisdom." 

She  shivered. 

"  Think  of  founding  a  new  existence  on  broken  faith,  on 
cowardice." 

"  You  know  you  are  talking  sheer  superstition." 

She  seemed  not  to  hear. 

"Do  you  realize,"  he  went  on,  "  that  many  people,  en 
lightened  enough  to  admit  we  have  a  right  to  do  as  we  like 
with  ourselves,  would  deny  we  had  a  right  to  deprive  an 
other—" 

"You  talk  as  if  you  didn't  know  a  girl  '  deprives '  a 
whole  possible  family  of  life  every  time  she  says  '  No '  to  a 
man  who  asks  her  to  marry  him.  No  use  to  talk  to  me, 
I'm  a  hardened  criminal." 

She  made  a  nervous,  mocking  motion  to  get  up  and  cut 
the  colloquy  short.  Ethan  stopped  her  with  a  gesture  of 
grave  rebuke. 

"  Do  you  know  that,  if  you  had  committed  all  the  crimes 
in  the  calendar,  a  capital  sentence  could  not  be  executed 
upon  you  now." 

"Think  of  it !"  she  said,  with  indignant  eyes.  "  They'd 
not  only  keep  the  sword  hanging  over  a  poor  wretch  all  that 
time — they'd  let  her  horror  and  shrinking  stamp  itself  on 
an  innocent  creature.  Oh,  man's  justice  is  an  odd  jumble  !" 

"  If  public  justice  falls  short,  what  of  mine  to  you  ?" 
lie  walked  a  few  paces  up  and  down.  "I've  never  seen 
you  like  this  before,  Val." 

"I've  never  before  lived  through  such  days,"  she  said, 
very  low. 

"  You  deceived  me  with  your  calmness." 

"  You  see  how  necessary  it  was  —  you  wouldn't  have 
understood  that  I  didn't  want  to  break  my  oath." 

488 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"I  understand  now."  He  stopped  before  her  with  hag 
gard  face.  "I  come  here  into  a  girl's  happy  life — I  take 
away  her  content,,  I  snuff  out  her  ambitions,,  I  give  her 
nothing  in  return.  For  years  I  bar  the  way  to  marriage — 
for  all  time  I've  shut  the  door  on  music.  It  is  my  fault 
you  were  allowed  no  outlet  for  your  energies.  I  force  you 
back  on  a  barren  love  for  a  life-interest,  and  saying,  '  There 
is  only  this/  I  add,  '  Accept  it  at  your  peril/  I  am  filled 
with  horror  at  the  thought  of  the  way  Fve  marred  and 
broken  a  beautiful  life." 

"  Oh,  dear  one,  don't,  don't  !  It's  not  true,  you  know. 
It  wasn't  really  beautiful  till  you  came." 

He  shook  his  head. 

"Do  you  want  to  make  it  possible  for  me  ever  to  think 
of  myself  without  intolerable  loathing  ?" 

"  Dear,  dear  !"     She  held  out  her  hands. 

"Promise  me  to  forget  the  old  evil  compact." 

"  Ethan,  you'll  regret  this,"  she  said,  dropping  her 
hands;  "it's  not  you  who  ask  it  of  me  —  it's  all  those 
others."  She  nodded  towards  the  dark  mass  of  shadow 
made  by  the  Fort  against  the  gay  autumnal  background 
of  scarlet  maple  and  golden  elm.  "  It's  the  Ganos — it's 
she  most  of  all.  I  might  have  known.  If  you  live  under 
her  roof,  you  come  under  her  law." 

She  knew  him  too  well  to  imagine  she  could  stand  out 
successfully  against  his  resolution  that  the  compact  should 
be  abandoned.  What  little  by  little  helped  to  heal  her 
spirit  was  presently  her  belief  that  he  not  only  willed  the 
new  course,  but  desired  it.  Of  that  he  had  fully  persuaded 
her — he  had  almost  persuaded  himself. 


CHAPTER  XXXV 

THEY  were  still  discussing  plans  of  travel,  or,  rather,  as 
the  days  went  on,  plans  of  avoiding  travel. 

"Italy  is  a  long  way  off,"  Ethan  had  said;  "we'll  go 
there  another  year." 

Yal  fought  hard  and  long  against  abandoning  her  darling 
scheme  of  spending  the  winter  abroad,  not  giving  her  per 
sistency  its  right  name.  To  Ethan's  "  Why  ?"  she  would 
answer,  coaxingly,  "I  am  so  amused  abroad/' 

"  Dear  child,  you're  amused  everywhere." 

"It's  unfair  to  take  advantage  of  that." 

He  did  not  say  so,  but  he  dreaded  for  her  the  fatigues  of 
protracted  travel.  Still,  he  saw  it  was  imperative  they 
should  winter  in  some  warm  place.  Val's  series  of  colds 
and  threatened  delicacy  were  instinctively  avoided  in  their 
discussion  of  plans  ;  but  these  considerations  were  seldom 
out  of  her  husband's  mind.  As  he  visualized  the  coming 
months,  Ethan  thought,  man -like  and  naturally  enough, 
"Val  will  have  plenty  to  occupy  her,  but  I — I  must  find 
work  to  help  me  through  the  time."  He  cast  about  for 
the  saving  grace  of  hard  labor.  "  I  will  write  my  Political 
Confessions,"  he  said  to  himself  ;  "  just  my  case  has  never 
been  put."  And  he  set  about  sifting  his  books  and  notes  ; 
ordering  government  and  party  reports ;  indulging  freely 
in  the  beguiling  pastime  of  "  collecting  material."  About 
this  time  he  was  deep  in  correspondence  with  a  group  of 
young  men  who  had  formerly  rallied  round  him  in  Boston 
and  New  York,  but  whom,  as  he  now  saw,  he  had  too  much 
neglected  since  his  marriage.  He  felt  anew  that  these  men, 
organized,  led,  supplied  with  the  sinews  of  war,  had  it 
in  them  to  render  America  a  sorely  needed  service. 

490 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"Val,"  he  said,  one  day,  "how  many  people  can  we  put 
up  comfortably  here  ?" 
She  opened  her  eyes. 

"Guests?" 


"I  thought  we  were  going  away  ourselves." 

"  So  we  are  in  a  fortnight  or  so,  if  we  can  decide  where. 
I  should  like  to  have  some  men  here  for  a  few  days,  if  you 
don't  mind." 

She  turned  her  head,  and  looked  out  of  the  window. 

"  Who  are  the  men  you  want  to  ask  —  relations  ?" 

"Relations!  No.  What  made  you  think  —  Besides, 
you  know  I  haven't  any  but  De  Poincy." 

"  Y  —  -yes.  Still,  I  couldn't  imagine,  just  at  first,  that 
you'd  want  a  lot  of  strangers  here  —  now." 

"Not  if  you  object,  of  course.  But,  since  you  seemed 
quite  ready  to  set  off  to  Persia  or  China  at  any  moment,  I 
couldn't  be  expected  to  know  you  objected  to  strangers." 

"  Whom  did  you  want  ?" 

"Oh,  it  doesn't  matter.  I  was  thinking  of  the  two 
Careys,  and  Williams  and  Dunbar." 

"The  men  who  are  trying  to  make  you  get  up  a  Labor 
paper  ?" 

"  The  men  that  I'm  trying  to  make  devote  their  great 
talents,  their  lives,  to  saving  the  country." 

There  was  reproach  in  his  tone,  even  a  kind  of  hardness 
that  had  come  into  his  manner  more  than  once  of  late. 
His  usually  quick  -folio  wing  fit  of  remorseful  tenderness 
never  quite  healed  the  hurt. 

"  Of  course,  ask  your  friends  if  you  like." 

She  got  up  and  went  out  of  the  room.  Back  and  forth 
under  the  big  tulip-tree  she  walked  in  the  crisp  October 
air,  commanding  her  face  to  a  pale  incommunicativeness, 
but  clinching  and  unclinching  her  hands. 

A  deep  discouragement  had  been  growing  upon  her  at 
Ethan's  feverish  eagerness  to  get  to  work.  "You  don't 
seem  to  have  any  time  at  all  for  play  nowadays,"  she  had 
said  to  him,  half  laughing,  more  than  once.  He  sat  over 

491 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

his  writing-table  all  day,  and  ho  read  late  into  the  night. 
For  days  and  days  they  had  not  been  alone  in  the  old  idle 
blessed  way  of  lovers,  and  never  had  she  needed  him  so 
much.  "How  shall  I  be  able  to  go  on, "she  said  to  herself, 
"  unless  he  keeps  close  beside  me  ?" 

It  was  at  a  garden-party  at  Julia's  that  Val  went  across 
the  lawn  to  Ethan  at  the  end  of  a  game  of  tennis,  and 
said  : 

"I'd  like  to  give  a  party  at  the  Fort  before  we  go. 
What  do  you  think  ?" 

"  What  kind  of  a  party  ?" 

"A  ball.  We  could  light  up  the  grounds  and  make  it 
look  lovely.  There's  never  been  a  big  party  at  the  Fort." 

"Well,  I  don't  mind.  But  you  haven't  much  time  now 
to  get  it  up." 

"Let's  go  and  find  Julia  and  Mr.  Scherer,  and  talk  it 
over." 

Mrs.  Otway  told  them  that  Julia  had  gone  into  the 
house  for  an  ice,  and  they  must  do  likewise.  As  they 
passed  through  the  parlor  they  noticed  a  group  about  a 
portrait  of  Mrs.  Otway,  taken  in  her  youth.  Some  of  her 
neighbors  were  discussing  in  discreet  undertones  whether 
it  was  credible  that  their  rotund  hostess  ever  looked  like 
this  daughter  of  the  gods. 

"I'm  sure  she  did,"  said  Val;  "my  father  has  often 
told  me." 

"She  ought  to  have  died  young,"  said  a  stranger  stand 
ing  by.  "To  have  looked  like  that  was  a  great  achieve 
ment,  but  the  dear  lady  has  cancelled  it." 

As  they  moved  away  Val  tried  to  throw  off  the  impres 
sion  the  speech  had  made  upon  her  by  whispering  to 
Ethan : 

"Men  seem  to  forget  women  have  any  reason  for  living 
except  to  please  the  masculine  eye."  Winning  no  response, 
she  looked  up,  laughing.  "  One  comfort  of  not  being  a 
beauty  is  that  people  aren't  forever  remarking  how  you 
change." 

492 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  Oh,  we  can  do  Avonders  in  the  way  of  change  without 
being  beauties." 

They  found  Julia,  and  arranged  that  she  and  Tom 
Scherer  should  come  over  in  the  evening  and  discuss  the 
ball.  The  rumor  of  it  went  abroad,  and  little  else  was 
talked  of  in  New  Plymouth  for  the  intervening  days. 

Val  and  Julia  sat  on  the  veranda  at  the  Fort  the  even 
ing  after,  making  out  lists  of  invitations.  After  all,  some 
of  Ethan's  friends  had  been  telegraphed  to,  and  were  com 
ing  from  a  distance.  Mrs.  Ball  was  expected,  with  all  her 
circle.  Val  was  asking  even  Baby  Whittaker,  of  abhorred 
memory. 

Ethan,  with  Scherer  and  Harry  Wilbur,  was  walking  up 
and  down  the  gravel-path,  smoking  and  talking.  Ethan 
suddenly  called  out  : 

"You'd  better  go  in-doors,  Val." 

"Go  in!     Why?" 

"The  dew  is  falling.     You'll  take  cold." 

"Oh  no/' 

He  urged  the  point. 

"  Don't  drive  me  in  this  heavenly  Indian-summer  night !" 
she  pleaded. 

They  all  exclaimed  against  his  barbarity,  and  he  went 
to  get  her  a  shawl.  There  was  nothing  in  the  hall.  He 
rang  :  no  one  answered.  He  went  up-stairs. 

In  vain  Val  called  after  him  :  "I've  got  my  scarf." 

Scherer  was  teasing  Julia  for  not  being  able  to  think  of 
anything  but  the  ball. 

"  You're  just  as  bad." 

He  protested. 

"You  men  were  talking  about  it,  I'll  be  bound,"  Julia 
said. 

"No,  we  weren't,  feather-brain,"  replied  Scherer,  with 
a  patronizing  air. 

"  Something  very  far  removed  from  balls,"  Harry  Wilbur 
put  in,  with  a  laugh. 

"What?" 

498 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  Oh,  we  were  cheerfully  considering  the  ethics  of  sui 
cide/'  said  Scherer,  stretching  himself  comfortably  in  a 
long  wicker-chair. 

Val  started,  but  no  one  observed  her. 

"Pleasant  topic/'  said  Julia. 

"Quite,  if  looked  at  rightly/'  responded  Scherer. 
"  Gano  was  saying  how  curiously  illogical  people  are. 
We've  all  heard  Christian  people  who  shudder  at  the  word 
'  suicide  ' — tender  women,  mothers— who  hasn't  heard  them 
say,  looking  back  to  the  early  death  of  a  child,  *  I've  come 
to  thank  God  for  taking  him  unspotted  from  the  world. "j 

"  Yes,"  remarked  Julia,  "  I'm  sick  of  hearing  the  saying 
that's  always  trotted  out,  '  Our  loss,  but  his  gain.''' 

"Ah,  but  don't  think  it's  insincere/'  said  Scherer. 
"  Even  the  simple-minded  may  appreciate  the  safety  and 
dignity  of  death  when  the  deliverer  is  introduced  by  cold, 
or  fever,  or  ghastly  accident,  by  inherited  weakness,  even 
by  neglect — in  any  way  but  by  the  calm  and  steadfast  will 
of  the  one  chiefly  concerned." 

Val  sat  up  and  stared.  Ethan's  very  intonation  had  got 
into  Scherer's  voice. 

"If  a  fellow's  trapped  into  death,"  he  went  on,  "it's  a 
blessing  ;  if  he  goes  voluntarily,  a  disgrace." 

"Disgrace  or  not,  it's  on  the  increase,"  said  Wilbur, 
"and  fellows  like  you  had  better  be  careful  how  you  go 
about  advocating — " 

"  No  ;  I  agree  with  Gano  about  that.  Even  when  public 
opinion  is  more  civilized,  natural  cowardice  will  keep  the 
death-rate  down.  Certain  to,  if  social  conditions  are  im 
proved.  But  even  if  the  number  who  go  that  way  should 
be  much  greater,  are  you  so  certain  that  a  voluntary  exit 
is  such  a  mistake?  Isn't  it  the  great  question  that  each 
man  should  answer  for  himself  ?" 

"No!"  roared  Wilbur,  excitedly;  "he  should  satisfy  a 
public  functionary  that  he's  paid  his  debts  and  provided 
for  those  who  are  dependent  on  him." 

"Accepted!"  cried  Scherer,  delighted,  "although  we'd 
be  establishing  an  aristocracy  of  the  dead.  But,  seriously, 

494 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

isn't  it  for  social  reformers  first  to  make  life  less  of  an 
indecency  for  the  masses  before  they  insist  that  each  man 
should  hold  his  life  as  sacred  ?  Society  degrades  and  bru 
talizes  a  man,  and  yet,  forsooth,  for  the  sake  of  society  he 
is  to  hold  his  insulted  life  as  sacred." 

Val  leaned  back  in  her  chair,  wondering  if  Julia  was 
annoyed  at  Scherer's  aping  of  Ethan.  Was  it  conceivable 
that  the  others  didn't  see  it — didn't  hear  it  ? 

"Why,  the  world  is  overrun,"  he  was  saying,  in  a  trav 
esty  of  Ethan's  manner — "  overrun  with  superfluous  myr 
iads  who  are  freely  allowed  to  groan,  travail,  starve. 
Only,  society  insists,  they  must  die  slowly,  and  not  shock 
our  sensibilities.  Or  they  may  turn  over  a  new  leaf,  and 
live  prosperously  by  selling  their  bodies  and  their  souls — 
anything  rather  than  reproach  us  and  arraign  life  by  taking 
themselves  off.  But  cheer  up,  Wilbur ;  we  can  always 
bring  in  the  usual  verdict.  Oh,  more  blessed  than  Meso 
potamia  are  the  words  '  temporarily  insane' !" 

"  That's  what  such  people  usually  are,"  said  Harry,  un 
moved. 

"  Of  course ;  don't  we  read  it  in  every  paper  ?"  jeered 
Scherer — "this  woman,  that  man,  starved  to  death,  a 
paragraph  of  sentimentality.  A  suicide  gets  his  column 
of  calumny.  The  same  society  that  cheerfully  permits  a 
man  to  starve,  that  supports  the  system  under  which  he 
must  starve,  is  outraged  if  the  victim  doesn't  die  with 
decent  slowness.  Starvation  is  'a  sad  case/'  suicide  is 
' punishable  crime." 

"I  used  to  hear  my  father,"  said  Val,  in  a  low  voice, 
"wondering  at  the  great  sums  devoted  to  the  use  of  hos 
pitals  full  of  idiots,  cripples,  incurables,  and  people  who 
want  to  die,  while  the  streets  of  all  the  cities  of  the  world 
are  full  of  the  young  and  strong  and  poverty-stricken  who 
need  bread,  and  are  filled  only  with  a  passionate  desire  for 
life  on  almost  any  terms." 

Ethan  came  out  with  a  shawl  and  a  rug.  As  he  was 
putting  the  wraps  round  his  wife,  he  chanced  to  touch  her 
hand. 

495 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"You  are  cold  as  ice  !"  he  exclaimed. 

"  No,  no  ;  this  is  lovely  !" 

"You  mustn't  stay  out  another  minute/'  As  he  saw 
she  was  about  to  protest  again,  he  cut  her  short.  "  If  you 
want  to  argue,  come  inside  and  argue.  If  you  don't,  I'll 
have  to  carry  you/' 

After  their  friends  had  gone,  Ethan  said  something  half 
jocular  about  Scherer  and  his  new  political  enthusiasms. 
"  But  Scherer  will  rise.  You'll  see,  he  will  help  to  accom 
plish  some  of  the  reforms  I've  only  talked  about/' 

"I  dare  say  ;  still,  I  think  I  prefer  your  theories  ac  first 
hand/' 

"What  theories?" 

"He  kindly  continued  your  conversation  after  you  went 
to  hunt  for  a  shawl/' 

"Damn  him!" 

He  damned  him  to  his  face  the  next  morning. 

"What!"  said  poor  Scherer,  with  open  mouth,  "not  a 
subject  for  conversation  ?" 

"Certainly  not ;  the  world's  not  ready  for  it." 

"No,  no,"  said  Scherer,  rapidly  reconstructing;  "per 
haps  not.  If  the  theory  were  widely  accepted  it  would 
bring  about  many  avoidable  disasters." 

"How  so  ?"  demanded  Ethan,  ready  in  a  minute  to  de 
fend  his  faith  against  all  comers. 

"It  might,"  said  Scherer — "might  sap  the  energy  and 
courage  of  people  who,  but  for  its  teaching,  would  go  on 
bravely  to  the  end." 

"It  is  itself  'the  brave  end/' 

Three  days  before  the  ball,  Val,  coming  in  from  a  drive 
with  the  Otways,  found  that  Ethan  had  had  a  Mexican 
hammock  put  up  between  one  of  the  locust-trees  and  the 
giant  tulip. 

"  What  a  good  plan  !  People  who  are  tired  dancing 
will  be  glad  to  find  this." 

49(» 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  I  wasn't  thinking  of  the  ball,  oddly  enough.  What  a 
horrible  racket  those  men  have  been  making  all  da}7  putting 
up  the  pavilion  !" 

He  leaned  his  head  on  his  hand.     His  face  looked  worn. 

"Fm  so  sorry  they  disturbed  you,  but  I'm  glad  the  ham 
mock's  just  for  me."  She  ran  out  as  soon  as  supper  was 
over  to  contemplate  her  new  toy.  "Ethan!"  she  called, 
presently. 

He  came  on  to  the  veranda  wearing  a  hat  and  carrying 
a  walking-stick. 

Her  countenance  fell. 

"  Aren't  you  coming  to  have  a  swing  ?" 

He  laughed. 

"Not  for  me,  thank  you  !" 

' '  Where  are  you  going  ?" 

"Just  for  a  little  walk.  It's  not  good  for  you  to  be-  out 
after  sundown  !"  he  called  back  as  he  went  off. 

She  lay  in  the  hammock  very  still  a  long  while.  The 
frogs  far  off  were  iterating  their  hoarse  melancholy.  Was 
it  a  belated  firefly  that  nickered  dejectedly  in  the  chill  air  ? 
An  oppression  settled  down  on  her  chest,  but  she  never 
felt  it  for  the  greater  weight  on  her  heart.  She  pressed 
her  two  hands  tight  over  her  face,  that  the  servants  might 
not  hear  her  crying. 

"  To  think  that  this  should  be  me,"  she  said  to  herself, 
in  a  kind  of  excitement,  "when  I  meant  to  be  so  happy  ! 
After  all" — she  sat  up  and  steadied  herself  as  she  swayed— 
"  it's  very  wonderful  to  have  found  life  so  much  better, 
and  so  much  worse,  than  anybody  ever  said.  If  only  Ethan 
and  I  could  go  through  the  hard  places  by  ourselves,  if 
only  there  were  no  one  else — oh,  God,  if  only  there  were 
no  one  else  !" 

She  lay  back  again  in  the  hammock.  By -and -by  a 
noise  in  the  house  :  Ethan  putting  quick  questions,  sev 
eral  servants  speaking  at  once,  then  Ethan's  voice,  sharp 
with  anxiety,  calling  : 

"Val  !   Val!" 

"Yes,  out  here." 
3 1  497 


Til  1-     ol'KN    QUESTION 

Hastily  she  dried  her  face. 

He  came  out. 

"  You  surely  have  not  been  out  here  ever  since— 

"  Yes  ;  ever  since  you  went  away  and  left  me." 

But  she  spoke  almost  brightly. 

"  Well,  I  must  say  I  think  you  might  have  remembered — '' 

"  Can't  remember  but  one  thing  at  a  time.  I  was  think 
ing  about  something  else/' 

"  You're  not  to  be  trusted,"  he  said,  gravely. 

"Not  a  bit,"  she  agreed.  "I'm  an  eye-servant.  The 
minute  your  back's  turned—  Oh,  I  require  a  great  deal 
of  looking  after — and" — with  a  laugh  that  broke  suspi 
ciously — "  I  don't  get  it." 

She  had  stood  up,  holding  fast  to  him,  as  she  freed  her 
self  from  the  hammock  and  the  rug.  He  drew  her  hand 
through  his  arm  and  went  with  her  to  the  house. 

"No,  no,"  she  said,  stopping  at  the  veranda,  "  /  want 
a  little  walk,  too." 

Demurring,  he  put  the  rug  round  her  and  they  went  on. 

"I've  been  thinking  it  would  be  a  good  idea  to  go  to 
California  for  the  winter,"  he  said,  presently. 

"You've  seen  California." 

"  But  yon  haven't." 

"  No,  and  I  don't  want  to." 

"  Is  that  true  ?" 

"  Well,  it's  true  that  I  want  to  see  other  places  more — 
queerer  places,  farther  off,  that  I  can't  imagine  for  myself." 

"Don't  flatter  yourself  that  you  can  imagine  California. 
I  was  thinking  I  ought  to  look  after  my  ranch  there.  And, 
besides,  the  place  in  Oakland^is  really  beautiful.  I  could 
make  you  very  comfortable  there." 

"Could  you?"  she  said,  wistfully.  "But,  after  all, 
'comfortable'  is  for  ninety." 

"  It  is  curious  that  I  should  have  to  remind  you  we 
mustn't  think  now  only  of  ourselves." 

How  stern  the  eyes  could  look — the  mouth,  how  hard  ! 
They  walked  on  in  silence,  down  the  first  terrace,  and 
along  the  second.  No  wilderness  rioted  below,  all  was 

486 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

pruned  and  trimmed  and  primly  smiling.  In  the  middle 
of  what  Mrs.  Gano  had  been  used  to  call  "  the  Lower  Pla 
teau/'  stood  the  dancing  pavilion,  finished  that  day,,  all  but 
the  outward  trappings  of  flags  arid  lanterns. 

"  I  believe  you'd  like  the  house  at  Oakland/'  He  spoke 
more  gently  than  before.  "There's  a  garden  and  a  little 
orange-grove,  and  the  Jand  slopes  down  to  the  sea/' 

"'Do  you  look  out  on  the  Golden  Gate?"  she  asked, 
quickly,  and  then  added,  involuntarily  :  "  But,  after  all, 
what  do  I  care  about  that  ?  I  want  to  see  people  in  other 
lands,  and  find  out  what  life  looks  like  to  them." 

"  You  can  do  something  of  the  sort  later,  if  you  like." 

"  Oh,  later  I  later  !  Everybody's  said  Mater'  to  me  ever 
since  I  was  born.  Who  knows  whether  I'll  ever  go  at  all 
if  I  don't  go  now  ?" 

"Ha!"  he  said,  with  a  flash,  "now  we  have  the  real 
reason." 

She  lowered  her  eyes  and  was  dumb. 

"  Will  you  tell  me  why,  just  lately,  when  you  have  greater 
incentive  than  you  ever  had  before,  you  seem  to  have  less 
hope,  a  weaker  hold  on  life  ?" 

"All  imagination,"  she  said,  evasively.  "Listen  to  that 
woodpecker."  Her  head  drooped,  dreamily.  How  pale 
she  looked  in  the  gray  light  !  "  He's  tapping  the  old  locust- 
tree  under  my  window,  just  as  he  used  to — hundreds  of 
years  ago — when  I  was  a  little  girl." 

"  Val,"  he  said,  "  you  are  not  like  yourself." 

"  Xo,"  she  answered,  vaguely. 

He  took  her  face  between  his  hands  as  if  to  catch  and 
concentrate  the  wandering  spirit. 

"  Where  is  the  old  Val  gone  ?    I  want  her  back." 

The  slow  tears  filled  her  eyes.  "  You  mustn't  mind, 
dear;  she  went  away,  I  think,  one  of  those  days — " 

"What  days?" 

"  When,  with  all  that  pain,  everything  was  made  ready." 

He  dropped  his  hands,  but  she  caught  them.  "I  wish 
we  could  go  away,  too.  But  far,  very  far  from  here,  where 
everything  is  new  and  strange." 

499 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"Oh,  my  dearest,"  he  said,  brokenly,  "surely,  surely, 
with  so  much  at  stake,  we  can  readjust  ourselves  to  the 
changed  conditions." 

She  drew  one  hand  across  her  eyes.  "You  call  yourself 
weak,"  she  said,  "  hut  it's  no  surprise  to  me  to  find  how 
much  stronger  you  are  than  I.  You  can  make  yourself 
face  about,  manfully  enough.'' 

"Well,  and  so  can  you."  He  searched  the  sensitive 
white  face  that  gave  no  sign.  What  strange  and  unsuspected 
enemy  had  that  not  unvaliant  spirit  encountered  in  her  path  ? 
As  he  looked  at  her,  something  born  of  their  nearness — 
terrible  offspring  of  true  marriage — spoke  to  him  out  of  the 
silence,  telling  him  how  each  time  this  woman  went  stray 
ing  in  thought  along  that  way  of  promise  that  is  wont  to 
smile  so  benignly  upon  young  expectant  wives,  each  time, 
before  she  could  taste  any  of  the  natural  joy  and  pride  in 
her  estate,  came  crushing  back  upon  her  the  dead  weight 
of  their  long  fear,  the  gathered  momentum  of  all  their  long 
terror-stricken  fleeing. 

The  sudden  change  in  his  face  showed  her  that  her  secret 
was  no  longer  her  own. 

"  Oh,  what  is  it  like  ?"  she  cried  out,  suddenly.  "  What 
is  it  like  to  have  hoped  and  longed  all  these  months,  in 
stead  of  dreaded  ?" 

"Hush  !  hush  !"  he  said,  shrinking. 

"  I,  who  was  so  eager  to  know  all  that  women  can  know, 
I  shall  never  know  that." 

He  sank  down  on  the  terrace-steps  in  the  twilight,  and 
buried  his  face  in  his  hands. 

"Did  I  ever  tell  you" — her  voice  sounded  faint  and  far 
above  him,  like  the  voice  of  some  disembodied  spirit — "did 
I  ever  tell  you  how  proud  I  used  to  be  to  know  my  father 
once  said  that  I  was  the  symbol  of  my  parents'  single  year 
of  perfect  happiness,  the  inheritor  of  the  best  moments  life 
had  brought  them  ?  Ethan  " — she  bent  over  him,  whisper 
ing  hurriedly  and  panting  a  little  like  one  pursued — "the 
thought  clutches  at  me  in  the  night,  it  won't  let  me  go — " 

"What  thought  ?"  said  the  muffled  voice. 

T)00 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  That  for  a  child  of  fear  and  shrinking  there  isn't  much 
place  in  this  world." 

No  answer. 

She  sat  down  beside  him.  Like  a  frightened  child  she 
crouched  up  against  him.  "  All  those  times  of  dread  come 
back,  their  evil  faces  frowning.  Bad  fairies  !  they  wait  for 
— for  the  new-comer  with  sinister  gifts  in  their  hands." 

"Don't  think  such  thoughts."  He  seized  her  arm 
roughly. 

"No,  no  ,  help  me  not  to/'  she  said,  shuddering.  "  But 
I  wish  I  knew  what  it  had  been  like  to  my  mother — that 
first  knowledge." 

"  You  may  be  sure  she  was  glad." 

"  Yes,  yes ;  not  like  that  hour  in  the  long  room,  not  as 
we  welcomed  our — " 

"  You  shall  not  talk  so  !  to  think  of  it  so  is  a  crime."  He 
leaped  to  his  feet.  "Do  you  hear  ? — a  crime." 

She  seemed  to  cower  there  below  him  on  the  step. 

"And  yet,"  she  whispered,  "whenever  we  look  at  the 
child  we  shall  remember  that  hour.  He'll  wear  my  shrink 
ing  in  his  poor  little  face.  Oh,  what  shall  I  do  ?  In  that 
hour,  it  may  be,  I  branded  my  child  !" 

He  sat  beside  her  all  night  long  while  she  tossed  and 
dozed,  and  in  her  sleep  pressed  both  hands  to  her  breast, 
moaning  faintly  now  and  then.  The  doctor  had  been  sent 
for  at  midnight,  and  came  again  in  the  early  morning. 

"He's  frightened!"  said  Val,  watching  the  door  as  he 
went  out  after  the  second  visit.  "So  are  you."  She  smiled. 
"  You're  forgetting  how  hard  we  Ganos  are  to  kill." 

"  You'll  soon  be  all  right." 

She  studied  him.  "  You're  only  frightened  on  top."  He 
wondered  if  she  were  wandering.  "Underneath,"  she  went 
on,  "you're  thinking  this  would  be  a  solution." 

"Hush,  hush!"  He  put  his  arms  round  her.  "You 
must  remember  me,  dear." 

She  nestled  in  his  arms.  "She  used  to  say  we  Ganos 
were  dreadfully  hard  to  kill.  We  have  to  face  that." 

501 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  Don't  think  of  having  to  face  things  ;  forget  it  all." 

She  scanned  his  face  eagerly.     "  Where  shall  I  begin  ?" 

"Begin  ?" 

"'Yes — to  forget." 

Did  she  mean  to  ask  whether  she  was  to  forget  the  old 
compact,  or  its  new  annulment? 

''Begin  to  forget  where  the  pain  begins/'7  he  said,  eva 
sively. 

"That  would  carry  us  back  a  long  way.  But  anyhow, 
I  won't  do  it.  Pain  or  DO  pain,  /  don't  mean  to  forget." 

"  Yes,  yes,"  he  said,  soothingly. 

"  But  I  don't  want  to." 

He  looked  down  at  her  perplexed. 

"  I  don't  mean  to  forget  anything,  not  even  the  sad  things. 
]  don't  want  to  let  anything  go." 

"Well,  well."     He  smoothed  the  wild  brown  hair. 

"  To  forget  is  to  lose  a  bit  of  your  life,"  she  said,  catch 
ing  at  his  hand.  "What  was  it  you  said  once  ?  it  was  a 
first  victory  for  that  spectre  Annihilation  that  dogs  us  all. 
I  didn't  believe  in  your  Annihilation  then.  Not  very  sure 
I  do  now." 

She  laid  his  hand,  for  comfort,  over  the  ache  in  her 
breast. 

Worn  out  towards  morning,  and  yet  afraid  to  undress 
lest  the  doctor  might  have  suddenly  to  be  brought,  Ethan 
stretched  himself  on  the  sofa  under  the  east  window.  He 
was  scarcely  comfortably  relaxed,  when  Val,  who  had  not 
spoken  for  hours,  said  : 

"  Why  do  you  stay  so  far  off  ?" 

He  was  up  in  a  moment. 

"  Do  you  want  something  ?" 

"  Yes ;  I  want  you  near." 

"  Oh,  very  well ;  I  was  afraid  of  waking  you." 

Heavy  with  sleep,  he  threw  himself  across  the  foot  of  the 
big  four-poster.  She  pushed  herself  down  in  the  bed  till 
her  feet  under  the  covers  felt  his  body  through  all  the 
clothes,  then  she  lay  quite  still.  Ethan  dozed  and  dreamed. 

502 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

He  awoke  suddenly  with  the  impression  Val  had  called  him. 
He  raised  himself  011  his  elbow.  She  seemed  to  be  asleep. 
He  leaned  his  tired  head  against  the  bedpost,  turning  his 
face  to  the  east.  The  gray  dawn  was  coming  in  faintly  at 
the  window.  The  things  in  the  room  looked  spectral. 

Dimly  through  the  window  he  thought  he  could  see  the 
shadow  of  the  encircling  hills.  As  he  lay  looking  out,  a 
little  voice,  so  faint  and  far  it  might  have  come  with  the 
dawn  from  behind  the  hills  : 

"  It  is  no  superstition  that  oaths  are  binding." 

He  held  his  breath  to  listen. 

"If  we  deny  them  with  our  lips.,  our  nerves  are  loyal 
still." 

Then  silence.     The  light  grew  clearer. 

"  Our  lives  were  set  to  the  key  of  our  oath/7  said  the  lit 
tle  voice.  "When  we  denied  it,  discord  came." 

He  tried  to  speak ;  a  kind  of  paralysis  held  the  muscles 
of  his  throat. 

"It's  like  the  one  lie  that  calls  for  a  thousand,  for  a  life 
of  lies.  We  don't  lie  well,  we  Ganos." 

Another  longer  silence ;  then  a  fluttering  sigh  as  of  one 
eased  from  a  mighty  burden. 

"  Oh,  Fm  so  glad  the  morning's  come!  You  haven't 
kissed  me,  Ethan." 

He  rose  up  without  a  word,  kissed  her,  and  went  out. 

Of  course,  the  ball  had  been  postponed — "only  for  a  week," 
Val  insisted,  and  Ethan  had  agreed.  Later  this  same  day, 
he,  still  sitting  there  in  the  blue  room,  wondering  against 
his  will  at  her  recovered  spirits,  refusing  to  understand, 
asked  her  if  the  pain  was  gone.  She  made  the  motion 
"No',"  moving  the  brown  head  from  side  to  side  on  the 
pillow. 

"You  are  suffering  a  great  deal?"  he  faltered,  as  he 
bent  above  her. 

She  was  evidently  not  thinking  of  the  kind  of  pain  he 
meant. 

"  If  I  were  partly  paralyzed,  as  lots  of  people  are/'  she 

503 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

said,  with  something  of  the  old  defiance,  "it  would  hurt 
less,  I  suppose.  When  I  feel  like  shrinking,  I  just  remem 
ber  it's  a  sign  none  of  me  is  dead  yet,  that  I  can  suffer  from 
my  head  to  my  feet  as  horribly  as  this." 

"  Val  !"  He  sank  down  on  his  knees  and  buried  his 
head  in  the  coverlet. 

"  But  Til  have  all  eternity  for  being  free  of  pain.  When 
I  remember  that" — she  pulled  herself  up  and  spoke  in  a 
clear,  practical  tone — "it  brings  me  to  my  senses." 

"  What  can  I  do  for  you,  dear — what  can  I  do  ?" 

"  Don't  go  away." 

"I  won't." 

"  Fin  afraid  you  will." 

"Don't  be  afraid." 

"Not  to  collect  material  for  ' Confessions'  ?" 

"No,"  he  said,  smiling  dimly. 

"Not  even  to  write  to  the  Saviours  of  America  ?" 

"No." 

"I  hate  those  Saviours  !     America  doesn't  need  'em." 

"  She  has  only  to  say  so,"  he  said,  his  old  sensitive  vanity 
a  little  stung. 

"Oh,  America  is  all  right." 

"  Very  well,  America." 

He  drew  up  the  chair  again  and  sat  closer  to  the  bedside. 

"I  shall  love  being  ill,  if  you  don't  go  away,"  she  said, 
smiling. 

"  I  sha'n't  go  away  any  more,  even  when  you're  well." 

"Really?" 

"Yes." 

"  You  sure  you're  an  honest  Injun  ?" 

"  Injun  of  flawless  integrity." 

"  Then  I  shall  be  well  to-morrow." 

And  to  all  appearance  she  was  well  two  days  afterwards. 
When  she  came  down-stairs  she  was  protesting  gayly  that 
she  was  really  quite  ill,  and  must  have  all  an  invalid's 
privileges. 

"  Is  it  a  bargain  ?"  she  stopped  half-way  down  the  stair. 
"If  it  isn't,  I'm  going  back  to  bed." 

504 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  Yes,  all  the  privileges,"  he  agreed. 

"  And  you  won't  go  away  and  write  for  the  '  Saviours '  ?" 

He  laughed,  took  her  down,  and  established  her  in  the 
long  room. 

"  I  shall  be  very  particular,  or  else  what's  the  fun  of  be 
ing  an  invalid  ?  And  I  know  what  to  expect.  I  was  ill 
once  before.  Grandma  gave  me  a  delicious  glass  of  san- 
garee." 

"You  shall  have  sangaree."  He  made  it  himself. 
"  Now,  what  else  did  she  do  for  you  ?"  he  demanded,  like 
one  put  upon  his  mettle. 

Val  glanced  up  at  him  slyly. 

"  Grandma  used  to  read  suitable  selections  from  the 
Bible." 

He  leaned  against  her  chair,  looking  down  into  her  face, 
smiling  as  she  hadn't  seen  him  smile  for  many  a  day. 

"  /  can  give  you  suitable  selections,"  he  said,  with 
shining  eyes.  "  ( Behold,  thou  art  fair,  my  love  ;  behold, 
thou  art  fair  ;  thou  hast  doves'  eyes  within  thy  locks  :  thy 
hair  is  as  a  flock  of  goats  that  appear  from  Mount  Gilead/ 
'  Thy  lips  are  like  a  thread  of  scarlet — '  " 

The  voice  that  to  her  was  different  from  all  the  voices  of 
earth  went  thrilling  along  her  nerves  as  it  had  done  the 
first  night  she  heard  it  at  the  gate,  when  in  ignorant  girl- 
fashion  she  had  known  no  more  than,  "  I  must  follow,  fol 
low,  follow,  wherever  it  may  lead." 

That  night  she  whispered  passionately,  "You  are  loving 
me  more  than  ever  you  did." 

"Yes,"  he  said,  holding  her  close;  "the  old  Val  has 
come  back  to  me." 

"  There's  another  reason,"  she  said  in  her  heart. 

Val  had  at  last  agreed  to  go  to  California. 
"  Are  we  sure  to  be  ready  to  leave  the  Fort  on  Thurs 
day  ?"  she  asked. 
"  Why  Thursday  ?" 
"Because  of  the  ball." 

505 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  I  should  think  we  would  be  quite  ready  ;  but  does  it 
matter  ?" 

"Very  much." 

"Why?" 

"  Oh— a— there'll  be  a  kind  of  lull  after  the  ball,  and  I'd 
rather — a — 

"  Go  out  with  flags  flying  ?     I  understand." 

She  had  laid  even  New  York  under  tribute  for  her  f tie. 
With  the  help  of  a  chef,  a  florist,  and  a  decorator,  a  good 
deal  of  money  had  been  spent  to  astonishingly  effective 
ends,  considering  the  smallness  of  the  space  at  command. 
It  was  hard,  even  with  tons  of  flowers,  to  make  the  old 
Fort  anything  but  simple  and  grim;  but  the  more  gracious 
garden,  and  above  all  the  terraces,  lent  themselves  kindly  to 
flower  aisles  and  arches,  and  a  fairyland  scheme  of  lighting. 

The  maid  was  putting  the  last  touch  to  her  mistress's 
ball-dress. 

"That's  enough.  Now  go  and  ask  Mr.  Gnno  to  come 
here  a  moment." 

Val  turned  a  moment  later  and  saw  him  at  the  door. 
The  dead  black  and  white  of  his  evening  dress  gave  the 
fine  ivory  of  his  face  an  added  pallor.  She  looked  at  him 
with  quickening  pulse.  No  wonder  women  had  found  the 
haunting  beauty  of  that  face  a  troubling  memory.  As  he 
leaned  against  the  door,  fastening  a  flower  in  his  coat, 
smiling  in  at  her  in  the  old  enigmatic  way,  she  felt  sud 
denly  what  it  would  be  to  her  to  lose  her  empire  over  that 
restless,  homeless  spirit.  If  they  were  meaning  to  go  on 
and  on,  as  other  people  did,  how  could  they  hope  to  escape 
other  people's  ending  ?  And  she  smiled  back  at  him  sud 
denly  in  a  fierce,  triumphant  fashion.  He  came  forward 
into  the  room. 

"  What  is  it  ?     Why  do  you  look  like  that  ?" 

"How  do  I  look  ?" 

"As  if — as  if— well,  I  should  keep  out  of  your  way  if  I'd 
done  you  any  wrong." 

500 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

She  laughed  as  she  pulled  on  her  long  white  glove. 

"  Am  I  such  a  gorgon  in  my  new  gown  ?" 

His  eyes  went  slowly  over  her  with  a  kind  of  worship  in 
them.  She  trembled  slightly.  "  Not  one  pretty  word  for 
all  my  pains  ?" 

He  knelt  down  before  her,  bent  the  dark  head,  and  kissed 
her  little  white  shoes. 

As  they  met  a  moment  in  the  lancers,  Val  said:  "I 
wish  she  could  have  seen  the  old  Fort  to-night.  She  loved 
splendor,  too."  She  laughed  up  at  him  like  a  delighted 
child. 

"I've  been  amused,"  he  whispered  back,  "to  hear  peo 
ple  saying  it's  the  most  beautiful  ball  that's  ever  been  given 
in  the  State." 

"  Well,  of  course,  I  meant  it  to  be";  and  she  was  whirled 
away. 

It  was  about  two  o'clock  in  the  morning  that  Ethan 
made  his  way  out  of  the  pavilion,  with  a  feeling  of  unsup- 
portable  weariness.  He  must  get  away  from  all  those 
noisy,  irrelevant  people  ;  above  all,  he  must  get  away  from 
the  sight  of  Yal's  unthinking  joy.  He  walked  on  to  the 
far  corner  of  the  osage-orange  thicket,  and  stood  there  in 
the  deepest  part  of  the  shadow.  Down  below  the  terraces 
the  music  clanged  and  jarred.  The  round  Japanese  lan 
terns,  festooned  from  tree  to  tree,  were  like  strings  of  giant 
gems,  yellow  topaz,  rose  and  scarlet  coral,  lapis  lazuli, 
turquoise,  and  opal.  The  late  Indian  summer  night  was 
not  cold;  every  one  had  been  saying,  "What  wonderful 
weather  !"  but  to  Ethan  there  was  more  than  a  hint  of  win 
ter  in  the  pungent  air.  There  was  that  obscure  menace, 
that  sense  of  melancholy  lying  behind  all,  and  round  all, 
like  the  sea.  Autumn  had  brought  this  message  to  him 
since  his  childhood.  It  was  the  time  when  Nature  seemed 
to  pause  a  while  in  her  ceaseless  masque  of  the  seasons  to 
whisper  her  one  honest  word  into  the  ear  of  man.  "Be 
warned  !"  she  seemed  to  say  ;  "be  warned  I" 

507 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

Then  lie  remembered  —  without  reassurement,  rather 
with  displeasure — that  Val's  pulses  beat  time  to  a  brisker 
measure.  To  her  the  mysterious  message  had  translated 
itself  into  a  breathless  sense  of  something  new  and  strange 
on  its  way  to  her,  "something  wonderful  going  to  happen, 
that  never  happened  in  the  world  before."  Fresh  realiza 
tion  of  this  "  difference  "  that  spread  through  all  their  life 
made  to  his  harassed  sense  a  clear  line  of  cleavage  down 
between  their  souls  ;  and  he  felt  himself  alone,  lie  re 
membered  her  merry  look  as  he  passed  her  and  Wilbur  on 
the  way  up  the  terrace,  her  mocking  whisper,  "  Xot  one  of 
the  '  Saviours '  can  dance.  Oh,  poor  America  !"  Even  while 
lie  smiled  at  the  remembrance,  he  was  saying  in  his  heart, 
"At  this  moment  she  can  laugh  and  jest,  and  give  a  ball!" 
Then  he  reproached  himself.  Bah  !  woman  is  a  grown-up 
child.  How  should  she  realize  existence  !  She  has  no 
system  of  faith  or  of  philosophy.  Her  life  is  a  string  of 
moods — white  pearls  and  black  upon  a  thread  of  hazard. 


CHAPTER  XXXVI 

IT  had  pleased  Val's  love  of  travel  by  water,  and  helped 
her  to  endure  the  thought  of  her  long  overland  journey  to 
the  Pacific,  that  they  should  go  down  by  river  to  the  great 
railway  centre  and  junction  for  the  West.  Just  before 
noon,  on  the  day  after  the  ball,  all  was  in  readiness  for  the 
last  leave-taking.  The  heavier  trunks  had  gone  down  early 
to  the  landing  below  the  Fort.  Ethan  was  leaving  his 
agent  and  several  servants  to  wind  up  affairs,  and  the  house 
was  still  in  gala-dress,  and  overrun  with  people.  Many  of 
the  guests  from  a  distance  were  not  leaving  till  later,  and 
they  all  went  down  to  the  river  "  to  see  the  Ganos  off." 
More  than  half  the  population  of  the  town  seemed  to  Ethan 
to  be  bent  on  the  same  errand.  He  got  out  of  the  crowd 
at  the  landing,  looked  at  his  watch,  said  he  had  forgot 
ten  something,  and  hurried  back,  shaking  off  Scherer  and 
others,  by  the  way,  with  scant  ceremony.  When  he  reached 
Mioto  Avenue,  instead  of  crossing  it  and  continuing  on  up 
to  the  front  entrance  of  the  Fort,  he  walked  hurriedly 
along  the  avenue  skirting  the  bottom  of  the  old  wilder 
ness,  now  the  garden.  When  he  came  to  the  barberry- 
bush,  he  stopped,  casting  a  quick  look  to  right  and  left. 
With  some  pains  and  no  little  violence  to  his  hands,  he 
wrenched  one  of  the  new  palings  off  the  fence,  and  let 
himself  in.  Past  the  garish  pavilion,  up  the  first  flight  of 
steps,  with  a  glance  towards  the  thicket  of  the  hundred- 
leaved  rose,  where  An"  Jerusha  had  stood  so  long  ago  with 
apron  to  her  eyes — on,  round  the  deserted  house  to  the 
front  porch.  He  stared  at  his  name  on  the  door  with  a 
sense  of  its  being  strange  to  find  it  there  still.  He  lifted 
the  knocker  and  let  it  fall ;  no  one  came.  He  rang  the  bell. 

509 


TI1K    OPEN    QUESTION' 

"The  people  who  used  to  live  here  must  all  be  gone 
away/'  he  said  to  himself,  playing  with  the  idea  that  it  was 
"many  years  after." 

He  went  round  to  the  back  veranda.  The  door  stood 
ajar.  He  looked  in,  wondering  to  find  the  place  open,  and 
yet  fearing  to  see  a  face.  All  the  world  was  down  at  the 
landing.  He  ran  up-stairs  three  steps  at  a  time.  Out  of 
the  writing-table  drawer  in  his  room  he  took  an  old  note 
book.  It  had  come  to  light  the  day  before,  but  there  had 
been  no  fire  in  his  room,  and  there  was  no  means  now  of 
burning  it.  But  he  was  glad  he  had  remembered  it  in 
time.  Down-stairs,  as  swiftly  as  of  old  when  Yuffti  fol 
lowed  hard  ;  a  moment's  pause  before  the  long-room  door. 
He  opened  it,  stood  looking  in  a  moment  at  the  high  red 
chair,  and  before  passing  on,  bent  his  head  like  one  who 
acknowledges  a  greeting. 

As  he  hurried  down  the  terrace  he  started,  catching 
sight  of  some  one  crouching  down  by  the  rose-bushes.  He 
called  out  sharply  : 

"Who  is  that?" 

"  Me,  sir,"  said  the  shamefaced  Venus,  getting  up  from 
her  kneeling  posture. 

"  What  are  you  doing  there  ?" 

Up  and  down  her  gingham  apron  she  was  furtively  rub 
bing  her  knees.  Think  of  Venus  losing  her  youth  and  ac 
quiring  "  rheumatics  !"  How  exactly  like  An7  Jerusha  she 
was  growing  ! 

"I  was  lef  in  chawge,  sah." 

"  Well,  you've  left  the  veranda  door  open  !" 

She  stopped  rubbing  her  knees  and  wiped  her  eyes. 

"  Dat  do'  sutny  am  open,  sah.  I  wanted — t'  see  de  las' 
ob  yer.  Dis  w'ere  me  an'  maw  done  spy  out  fo'  yo'  dat 
firs'  time.  Ole  Mis'  G'no — she  didn'  min'  me  an'  maw  bein' 
yere." 

"  You  saw  me  come  back  ?" 

"Yass,  sah."  Then,  as  if  to  palliate  the  crime  of  the 
open  door  :  "  Mebbe  a  long  time  fo'  I  see  yo'  comin'  in 
agin." 

310 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  Yes,"  he  said,  " it's  likely  to  be  a  long  time/7  and  his 
slow  look  went  round  the  place,  shying  at  the  pavilion. 

Venus  seemed  to  think  it  incumbent  upon  her  to  hold 
up  her  end  of  the  conversation. 

"  Huh  !  Can't  say  fo'  sho'  why  I'm  carryin'  on  like  dis 
yere."  She  mopped  her  eyes.  "Miss  Val  gone  away 
laffin'  fit  to  kill." 

"  Yes,  she  takes  it  better  than  we  do.     Good-bye,  Venus." 

"  Goo'-bye,  sail.  Trufe  is,  sah,  Miss  Val  mighty  sot  on 
seein'  de  worP.  Goo'-bye,  goo'-bye  !" 

She  waved  her  apron  till  he  was  out  of  sight. 

"  They've  rung  the  '  all  aboard '  bell  twice  \"  Val  called 
excitedly  from  the  deck  of  the  steamer  as  Ethan  appeared 
at  the  landing. 

He  gladly  cut  his  good-byes  short,  with  an  eye  on  the 
figure  up  there  against  the  sky,  in  dull  blue  tweed,  belted 
in  with  white  wash-leather.  She  had  shown  him  one  morn 
ing,  nearly  a  year  ago,  how  neatly  that  same  white  leather 
strip  fitted  over  the  old  Russian  belt  that  she  had  clung  to 
until  he  got  her  the  one  of  turquoises. 

"  Of  course,"  she  had  said  that  day  in  Paris,  laughing 
and  showing  her  white  teeth,  "if  I  were  a  clumpy  lady 
now — if  I  hadn't  such  a  nice  little  waist,  I  couldn't  wear 
two  belts,  and  I  could  never  wear  white  at  all  !  So  mind 
you  appreciate  me." 

It  was  that  day  he  had  gone  and  ordered  the  turquoise 
girdle.  Was  she  wearing  it  now  ?  Of  course.  Absurd 
child  !  she  never  dressed  without  it.  He  glanced  up  at 
her  in  the  midst  of  the  handshaking,  seeing  neither  Wil 
bur  nor  Soberer  nor  Julia,  but  a  wind-blown  figure  above 
him  on  the  brow  of  Plymouth  Hill,  looking  out  to  the 
future.  And  to-day  ?  The  same  questioning  eyes,  shoul 
ders  well  set  back,  the  little  head  held  high — she  was  still 
looking  the  world  in  the  face  ;  it  would  be  defiance  but  for 
the  smile. 

As  the  paddle  churned  the  water  there  was  a  chorus  of 
good-bying  and  hurrahing.  The  whistle  shrieked  — the 
steamer  lumbered  fussily  down-stream. 

511 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"Why  don't  you  wave,  too  ?"  said  Val,  excitedly.  "Is 
that  old  book  under  your  arm  what  you  went  back  for  ? 
Why  is  your  other  hand  full  of  leaves  ?" 

"I  can't  imagine  why."  He  opened  his  fingers  and  let 
the  scarlet  barberries  and  the  small  crisp  leaves  fall  into 
the  river. 

The  faces  in  the  crowd  were  growing  dim,  but  still  she 
waved  her  handkerchief. 

"  You  remember  that  man  you  once  told  me  about  ?"  she 
said. 

"  What  man  ?"  He  looked  dreamily  back  at  the  throng 
as  though  expecting  to  find  him  there. 

"  Don't  you  remember  he  was  at  play  when  the  Roman 
guard  came  to  carry  him  to  his  execution  ?  I  should  like 
to  call  back  to  my  friends  as  he  did :  'Bear  witness  when  I 
am  dead  that  I  had  the  better  of  the  game  !'" 

Ethan's  prophecy  proved  true.  Val  loved  the  place  at 
Oakland,  and  all  the  walks  and  drives  about.  She  delight 
ed  in  San  Francisco,  and  she  ransacked  Chinatown  with 
unabated  curiosity. 

"  You've  never  told  me  what  you  think  of  Yaffti,"  Ethan 
said  to  her  some  days  after  their  arrival. 

"Yafftil" 

"My  sailboat." 

"Oh,  I  haven't  encountered  Yaffti  as  yet." 

He  presently  realized  that  she  had  never  been  down  to 
the  beach  since  she  came.  Instinctively  he  avoided  sug 
gesting  it  again.  He  would  go  olf  for  a  sail  sometimes  him 
self  with  his  man,  Sam  Cornish,  an  old  sailor  who  had  been 
with  him  years  before  on  his  yacht.  But  Val  was  ingenious 
in  inventing  inland  outings.  Yaffti  for  the  most  part  was 
tethered  fast  in  the  little  cove,  and  Sam  smoked  endless 
pipes  on  the  pier. 

But  Val  made  the  old  sailor's  acquaintance  nevertheless, 
and  delighted  in  him.  One  day,  in  an  encounter  down  at 
the  stables,  Sam  made  bold  to  remonstrate  with  her  upon 
her  "  fear  o'  the  sea." 

512 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  'Tain't  wot  I  expected  by  the  look  o'  yer,  mum." 

She  laughed  a  little  nervously,  and  went  up  the  drive  to 
meet  Ethan. 

"  What's  Sam  being  saying  ?"  he  said,  conscious  of  the 
faint  trace  of  agitation  in  her  face. 

"  Sam  ?  Oh,  nothing !  Sam  and  I  are  great  friends." 
Restless  under  her  husband's  continued  scrutiny,  she  asked  : 
"  How  long  have  you  known  Sam  ?" 

"Oh,  seven  or  eight  years,  I  should  think." 

"  Well,  he  likes  me  best,  anyhow,"  she  laughed. 

s '  I  dare  say,"  said  Ethan,  adopting  her  note  ;  "  all  igno 
rant  persons  do." 

"  Yes,  it's  true  !"  She  stopped  a  moment.  "  Now,  why 
is  that,  do  you  suppose  ?"  she  said,  with  the  candid  air  of 
a  scientific  investigator. 

"  Merely  because  you  have  the  lean  role  to  play,"  he 
said,  still  smiling.  "  You  help  them  to  believe  in  happi 
ness.  I'm  apt  to  verify  their  worst  suspicions." 

Ethan  left  his  wife  very  little  alone,  and  it  was  strange 
and  pitiful  to  him — a  daily  mockery  of  the  human  lot — 
that  they  should  be  so  often  happy,  and  in  spirit  closer  to 
gether  in  these  hours,  than  they  had  ever  been  in  their 
lives.  They  clung  to  each  other  like  two  lost  children, 
and  the  days  went  by  in  a  dream. 

They  had  had  three  weeks  of  quite  perfpct  weather.  To 
day,  for  the  first  time  since  their  coming,  the  sky  lowered, 
the  air  was  heavy.  Still,  the  sun  showed  his  dazzling  Cal- 
ifornian  face  at  intervals,  and  Ethan  watched  the  weather 
signs  while  he  dressed,  his  heart  secretly  set  upon  going 
off,  by-and-by,  with  Yaffil  and  Sam  for  a  sail.  He  must 
find  out  discreetly  how  Val  was  going  to  spend  the  morn 
ing. 

"  What's  for  to-day  ?"  he  said  to  her  at  breakfast. 

"Fve  a  beautiful  plan  if  the  weather  behaves,"  she  an 
swered. 

They  stood  at  the  door  of  the  summer-house  after  break 
fast.  Val  would  leave  him  every  now  and  then,  go  to  the 
2K  513 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

lattice-window  that  looked  out  to  sea,  and  come  back  with 
the  latest  Signal  Service  report.  Her  version  was  so  uni 
formly  favorable  that  Ethan  laughed  at  last. 

"  You're  like  an  old  night-watchman  I" 

"  I'm  not  a  bit  like  an  old  night-watchman." 

"Yes,  yes,"  he  insisted.  "Weren't  you  told  as  a  child 
how  they  used  to  go  crying  the  hour  under  the  windows  in 
Baltimore,  i  Eleven  o'clock,  and  all's  well  !'  '  Midnight, 
and  all's  well'  ?" 

"  Very  nice  of  them,  I'm  sure  ;  and  if  the  family  watch 
man  says  '  All's  well '  after  luncheon,  you  are  to  take  me 
to  China." 

It  was  so  she  always  spoke  of  Chinatown.  He  thought 
of  the  narrow,  malodorous  alleys,  the  stifling  shops,  and  re 
gretted,  with  a  double  pang,  the  breezy  bay  and  Yaffti. 
However,  'he  would  have  a  couple  of  hours'  sail  before 
luncheon  to  sustain  him. 

"All  right,"  he  said  out  loud,  "we'll  go  to  China  this 
afternoon." 

As  she  leaned  against  him  he  put  his  arm  about  her 
waist. 

"  Where's  your  turquoise  gewgaw  ?"  he  said. 

"  Here" — she  lifted  a  hand  to  her  hair. 

"  No  ;  I  meant  the  other — the — "  As  he  noticed  the 
shade  on  her  face:  "You've  lost  it!  Aha!  I  knew  you 
would  if  you  wore  it  every  day." 

"I  haven't  lost  it,"  she  said. 

"  Tired  of  it  already  ?" 

"No  ;  I  didn't  put  it  on  this  morning." 

He  looked  at  her  with  changed  eyes.  She  dropped  her 
own,  went  over  to  the  lattice,  and  stood  there  facing  sea 
ward.  When  he  came  in  to  get  the  tobacco-pouch  he  had 
left  on  the  rustic  table,  she  went  out.  He  thought  of  that 
morning  in  Paris  when  he  had  designed  the  belt  and  chosen 
the  stones.  How  he  had  dwelt  in  imagination  on  the  mo 
ment  when  he  would  clasp  it  round  her,  see  her  joy,  and  be 
given  his  reward  !  Then  came  back  the  actual  moment  of 
his  giving  her  the  gift — came  back  with  an  even  greater 

514 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

anguish  than  he  had  known  in  living  through  the  moments 
by  the  fire  in  his  wife's  room  at  the  Fort.  He  tasted  the 
intolerable  bitter  of  the  contrast  between  what  he  had 
hoped  that  hour  would  bring,  and  what  it  actually  had 
brought,  till  he  was  ready  to  cry  out:  "What  demon  made 
me  mention  it  ?  She's  right  not  to  wear  the  accursed  thing !" 

As  soon  as  Val  went  in-doors  he  would  go  for  a  sail.  For 
nearly  half  an  hour  she  had  been  trailing  about  the  garden 
in  her  soft  white  draperies,  now  bending  down  to  look  at 
some  growing  thing,  now  looking  up  to  the  wind-blown  cloud 
masses,  to  where  the  strong  sunlight  poured  down  between 
the  rifts.  He  leaned  against  the  door  of  the  summer-house, 
rolling  cigarettes.  He  suspected  rather  than  heard  her 
talking  her  foolish  "little  language"  to  the  bird  in  the 
juniper-bush,  the  spoiled  bird  that  always  got  crumbs  after 
breakfast.  By-and-by  she  came  towards  him  across  the 
lawn  with  a  little  green  branch  in  her  hand.  He  realized 
that  she  must  be  weary,  she  was  dragging  her  feet.  Some 
thing  curiously  unlike  Val,  something  inelastic,  shackled, 
struck  him  in  her  gait.  His  face  darkened  suddenly;  an 
involuntary  shock  of  repulsion  went  through  him,  a  resent 
ment  keen,  impersonal,  unconscious  of  everything  save  his 
own  inward  recoil,  until  he  noticed  Val  had  stopped  short 
and  the  green  branch  had  fallen  at  her  feet.  He  went  for 
ward  to  pick  it  up.  As  he  handed  it  to  her  he  saw  her 
eyes  were  full  of  tears. 

"  My  dear  one,  what  is  it  ?"  he  said,  with  sharp  remorse. 

"Don't — don't  look  at  me  !     Turn  away  your  eyes." 

"Why— why,  dear?" 

"  Your  eyes  hurt — oh,  they  hurt  me  !" 

"  How  can  you  say  such  a  thing  !"  he  exclaimed,  ready 
to  perjure  himself.  He  would  have  laid  his  arm  about  her, 
but  she  shrank  away.  "  It's  not  like  you,  Val  !"  he  began, 
almost  indignantly. 

"No,  no,"  she  said,  on  a  wave  of  her  old  impetuosity, 
"it's  not  a  bit  like  me!  I  would  have  loved  the  great 
miracle.  I  would  have  waited  upon  it  reverently  every 
step  of  the  way,  so  proud,  so  happy — " 

515 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

She  broke  off  and  went  from  him  into  the  house. 

His  painful  remorse  was  checkered  by  the  reflection, 
"And  I  was  going  for  a  sail  !  Impossible  now/' 

He  stayed  all  the  morning  in  the  house  or  garden,  read 
ing  to  Yal  when  she  would  let  him,  surrounding  her  with 
every  offering  of  tenderness  his  keen  self-reproach  could 
invent.  But  he  was  too  close  in  spirit  to  the  woman  at  his 
side  not  to  divine  a  little  how  she  shrank  from  this  new 
considerateness  that  was  own  cousin  to  pity. 

As  he  sat  in  the  library  reading  aloud  before  luncheon, 
he  became  acutely  conscious  of  a  change  in  her  mood.  At 
first  he  thought  the  story  was  interesting  her  deeply,  and 
began  to  pay  more  attention  to  it  himself,  glancing  up 
covertly  now  and  then  at  the  face  opposite  to  him.  The 
languid  eyes  were  full  of  light  again,  her  apathy  swallowed 
up  in  some  unexplained  alertness.  He  was  so  struck  with 
the  change  that  he  bent  forward  and  laid  his  hand  over  hers. 
It  trembled  sharply  under  his  touch.  She  rose  and  walked 
about  the  room.  He  read  on  till  the  luncheon-bell  rang. 
She  sat  at  the  table  scarcely  eating,  answering  his  remarks 
with  gentle  vagueness,  and  looking  much  out  of  the  window. 

"No  hope  of  going  to  China  to-day,"  he  said,  at  last, 
following  her  eyes. 

"Not  at  two/'  she  answered.  ''That  was  why  I  didn't 
dress." 

After  luncheon  the}7  went  back  to  the  library. 

"  What  do  they  mean  by  shutting  the  windows  ?"  she 
exclaimed,  and  flung  them  wide. 

The  papers  in  the  room  flew  about,  and  he  closed  the 
door.  He  took  up  the  book  again,  feeling  that  neither  of 
them  was  much  in  the  mood  to  talk.  But  the  day  had 
grown  so  overcast  that  he  went  and  sat  in  the  bay-window, 
so  that  he  might  read  the  small  print  more  readily.  Yal 
moved  restlessly  about.  He  refrained  from  looking  at  her 
again  until  he  became  conscious  that  she  had  stopped  sud 
denly.  He  glanced  up,  and  saw  her  standing  rooted,  with 
a  look  of  tension  on  her  face,  her  head  slightly  tilted,  lips 
parted,  breath  held. 

516 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  What  is  it  ?"  he  said,  nervously. 

"  Don't  you  hear  ?" 

"What?" 

"Yaffti." 

"  What  nonsense  I"  he  laughed. 

"  Sh  !     Listen  I" 

In  the  silence  he  caught  the  faint  far-off  growl  of  thun 
der. 

"  You  forget/'  he  said,  after  a  moment,  speaking  as  one 
who  tries  to  cast  off  some  evil  spirit,  "you  forget  I've  made 
Yaffti  fast  in  the  bay." 

"He's  coming  inland  to-day,"  she  said;  "he's  tired  of 
waiting  for  us." 

Ethan  had  picked  up  the  book,  and  read  on  with  a  curi 
ous  under-current  of  excitement.  As  he  turned  the  leaves 
he  would  throw  out  a  swift  glance,  almost  like  one  running 
for  his  life  who  keeps  an  eye  on  an  enemy. 

The  flying  cloud  squadrons  had  rallied.  They  were 
drawn  up  now  in  serried  masses,  black  and  threatening. 
The  sun  had  fallen  back  overpowered,  vanquished  utterly. 
Such  noonday  darkness  in  the  lands  of  sunshine  is  a  com 
monplace  of  sub-tropical  climate,  but  to  Ethan  it  came  to 
day  as  a  portent  and  a  warning. 

Val  moved  from  window  to  window,  watching  the  great 
red-wood  trees  swaying  and  lashing,  and  taking  the  wind 
in  her  face. 

Ethan  closed  his  own  window,  and  suggested  that  the 
others  be  put  down. 

"No,  no,"  she  opposed  him,  almost  sharply. 

"  What's  the  matter  with  you  to-day  ?"  he  said  at  last, 
unable  to  endure  her  restlessness  any  longer.  "  Can't  you 
follow  the  story — can't  you  think  when  there's  a  thunder 
storm  ?" 

"Oh  yes,"  she  said  ;  "  I  can  think  best  of  all  then." 

As  she  stood  looking  up  in  a  kind  of  ecstasy,  suddenly 
the  lightning  played  about  her.  Involuntarily  Ethan  shrank 
and  shut  his  eyes  in  that  first  instant.  In  the  stupendous 
crash  that  followed  he  sprang  up.  Was  the  house  struck  ? 

517 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

She  stood  quite  still  with  exultant  eyes,  listening  for  the 
thunderpeals  us  if  they  were  answers  to  some  question, 
waiting  for  the  lightning  like  one  lost  in  the  dark,  who 
sees  a  torch  borne  nearer. 

He  put  down  the  windows  in  spite  of  her  "  Ah  no  !  ah 
no  !"  just  as  the  rain-cloud  broke  over  the  house. 

"I  keep  thinking  it's  the  big  tulip-tree  at  home,"  she 
said,  "  making  that  sound  like  surf  on  the  shore." 

The  rain  dashed  in  floods  against  the  window-panes,  and 
ran  down  in  sheets  like  sea-water  off  the  port-holes  of  a 
ship. 

" One  good  thing,"  said  Ethan,  "it's  too  violent  to  last 
long." 

The  house  groaned  and  trembled  under  the  bombard 
ment  of  the  storm. 

"  Listen  !"  she  said  again.  ' '  Oh,  Yaffti  is  very  angry 
this  time.  I  told  you  he  was  tired  of  waiting  so  long  in 
the  bay." 

She  opened  the  library  door. 

"Where  are  you  going  ?"  he  demanded. 

She  went  back  and  kissed  him. 

"Only  up-stairs.     I  want  to  write  to  Emmie." 

Ethan  had  been  right :  the  storm  was  too  violent  to  last. 
When  it  had  spent  itself  he  went  down  to  the  pier.  Sky 
still  a  little  overcast,  but  louder  than  ever  the  sea  called 
to  him. 

He  walked  up  and  down,  up  and  down.  The  salt  blew 
keen  in  his  face.  By-and-by  he  went  to  the  boat-house  to 
consult  Sam. 

"Well,"  in  Sam's  opinion,  "they  mout  be  a  bigger  gale 
on  the  way,  and  then,  again,  they  moutn't." 

But  after  a  while  the  warm  wind  seemed  to  blow  the 
clouds  low  down  on  the  threshold  of  the  ocean.  The  dome 
of  heaven  was  swept  bare  and  clean  except  for  a  little  cor 
ner  of  the  west.  And  louder  than  ever  the  sea  kept  call 
ing.  He  would  go  up  to  the  house,  he  told  Sam,  and  see 
what  Mrs.  Gano  was  doing — if  she  minded  his  going  out 
for  an  hour. 

518 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

She  had  written  to  Emmie  a  simple  family  letter,  full  of 
affection  and  reminders  of  the  old  days.  "  I  hope  you've 
forgiven  me  for  being  so  horrid  to  you  when  we  were  chil 
dren.  You  have  the  comfort  of  remembering  you  were 
always  very  gentle  and  forbearing  to  everybody.  I  was  a 
monster.  I'm  still  rather  a  monster,  but  I'd  like  you  to  go 
on  thinking  kindly  of  me." 

She  found  she  had  no  stamps,  and  looked  in  Ethan's 
room.  His  travelling  letter-case — it  was  really  a  portable 
writing-stand — lay  open  on  the  floor  of  his  dressing-room, 
with  his  bunch  of  keys  in  the  lock. 

"Careless  boy,"  she  said  to  herself,  and  went  over  to 
close  it. 

Her  eye  fell  on  the  old  note-book  that  Ethan  had  gone 
back  for  that  day  they  left  the  Fort.  She  opened  it  idly. 
He  had  shown  her  the  first  pages  himself,  with  their  odds 
and  ends  of  verse,  jottings  and  subjects,  etc.  Absently 
she  turned  the  leaves  to  the  end.  The  last  entry  was  the 
longest,  the  date  early  in  that  year  : 

"NICE. 

"  Forgetf  illness  !  That  is  all  my  prayer.  Do  I  blame  the  men  who 
drink?  No.  Opium-eaters?  Not  I.  I  wonder  we  do  not  all — all 
who  have  the  taste  of  suffering  on  our  lips,  and  the  knowledge  of  the 
aimless  grotesque  end — I  wonder  we  do  not  buy  oblivion  at  any  price. 
How  is  it  we  are  cajoled  to  bear  this  aching  at  the  heart  ?" 

"What  date  is  this  ?"  said  the  woman  aloud,  and  read 
again:  "Nice — why,  he  was  with  me,  and  we  were  happy  ! 
Nothing  had  happened  then/'  she  said,  forgetting  all  the 
pain  of  the  old  doubt  in  the  greater  pain  of  the  new  cer 
tainty. 

She  read  on  : 

"  Forgetf ulness  !  Dear  saints  in  heaven  !  it's  not  a  crown,  not  the 
white  robe  and  palm  I  crave — forgetf ulness  !  A  little  sweet  upon  the 
threshold,  and  then  the  dark.  By  sweet  I  mean  the  present  love  of 
some  one  dear  ;  or,  more  honestly  set  down,  I  mean  the  companion 
ship  of  the  one  dear  soul  on  that  far  quest.  Story-makers  write  at 
the  end,  'And  they  lived  happy  ever  after.'  Give  me  and  my  dear 
one  the  epitaph,  'And  they  were  dead  together  forever  after.'  'For 
those  myriads  who  merely  skimmed  the  surface  of  thought  and  feel- 

519 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

ing — for  those  who  had  few  fears  and  fewer  heartaches,  there  may 
come  a  Resurrection  Morn.  The  loud  trumpet,  dear,  shall  pierce  our 
sleep  as  well,  perhaps,  and  we  will  rouse  and  stir  a  little  in  our  folded 
shrouds.  I  will  whisper  in  your  drowsy  ear,  '  Dear  heart,  it  is  the 
morning.  Shall  we  arise  ?  Shall  we  take  up  the  round  again  ?'  And 
you  will  lie  closer,  with  your  arms  of  dust  about  me,  and  the  dear 
voice  will  say  in  my  ear,  '  No,  no,  beloved  ;  it  is  well  with  us  here  in 
our  narrow  house.'  And  I  will  say,  '  Bethink  you,  this  is  the  day 
when  all  men  rise  and  greet  their  friends.'  '  Friend,'  you  will  answer, 
'I  give  you  greeting  here.'  And  I,  'The  just  who  rise  to-day  are 
given  great  reward.'  But  my  beloved  says,  'You  gave  me  my  re 
ward  ;  I  have  it  in  my  heart  of  dust.'  '  But  Life  and  Light  are  wait 
ing  for  you  there.'  And  you  will  say,  '  I  know  them  both  ;  and  Death 
and  Darkness  are  the  better  part.'  Then,  as  I  feel  the  blessed  numb 
ness  stealing  over  this  quintessence  of  the  dust,  I  will  rouse  me  one 
last  moment,  remembering  how  fair  and  fit  for  living  and  for  loving 
my  beloved  was,  and  I  will  say  with  all  the  old  world-anguish  aching 
anew  in  every  atom  of  my  body's  dust,  'Dear,  there  is  much  love 
awaiting  you  up  there— that  love  you  did  so  hunger  for.  Rise  up. 
Love  calls.'  'Hush,  hush  !  I  have  found  my  love,'  I  seem  to  hear 
you  saying,  low  and  faint,  like  one  who  lingers  but  a  moment  on  the 
hither  shore  of  sleep.  '  Oh,  dear,  dear  heart,  I'll  say  one  word  before 
we  sleep.  There  is  no  other  day  of  waking.  If  you  stay  here  now, 
it  is  the  end.  There  comes  no  more  a  Resurrection  Morn.'  'There 
comes  no  more  a  battle  or  undoing,'  I  hear  you  say,  so  faint,  so  low, 
I  scarce  can  part  the  sound  from  silence  ;  'no  more  retreat,  no  more 
defeat,  no  aching  of  the  brave  and  hopeless  heart.'  Then,  'Good 
night,'  say  I.  And  you,  '  Good-night.'  " 


"No,  no!"  cried  the  living  woman.  "I'm  apter  at 
'  good-morning/  I'm  not  that  woman  down  beside  him  in 
the  dark." 

"  Val !"  he  was  calling  in  the  garden  ;  "  Val !"  he  was 
calling  on  the  stair. 

She  had  closed  the  hook,  and  slipped  it  guiltily  into  her 
pocket. 

She  left  her  letter  on  the  floor  and  ran  out  to  meet  him, 
catching  up  hat  and  gloves  as  she  hurried  through  her  own 
room. 

"I  was  just  coming. to  ask  you—'  he  begun.  "Oh, 
you've  changed  your  dress  !" 

520 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION 

"  Yes,"  she  said,  not  meeting  his  eyes. 

"  Well,  what  shall  we  do  ?"  They  went  down  together 
to  the  door.  He  thought  regretfully  of  Yaffti  and  the 
shining  bay.  "  What  do  you  think  you'd  like  ?" 

"Let  us  go  down — "  She  nodded  towards  the  boat- 
houses. 

"You  don't  mean  down  to  the  beach  ?" 

-'Yes." 

He  studied  her  a  moment. 

"  The  wind  off  the  bay  is  fresh  after  the  storm,"  he  hesi 
tated.  "You  are  dressed  very  lightly." 

"No,  no — quite  warm." 

"In  that  blue  cobweb,  open  at  the  throat?" 

"  It's  the  dress  you  like  best,"  she  said,  in  a  low  voice. 

lie  saw  now  there  was  something  more  than  common 
careful,  something  selected,  in  the  simple  toilet  —  her 
creamy  laces,  her  favorite  jewels. 

"  Very  charming  ;  but  you  can't  deny  you're  not  dressed 
for  rough  weather." 

"  Yes,  I  am  ;  you'll  see.     But  bring  my  reefer,  too." 

While  he  got  the  jacket  she  put  on  her  hat  and  gloves. 

Down  on  the  pier  she  found  the  wind  stronger  than  she 
had  expected.  She  shivered  a  little,  although  it  was  warm, 
and  drew  the  rough  reefer  together.  She  saw  Ethan  throw 
back  his  head,  and  his  nostrils  expand  slightly  as  he  in 
haled  the  strong  sea  smell. 

"Will  ye  be  goin'  out  ?"  Sam  asked. 

"  No,  not  to-day." 

"  Why  not  ?"  asked  Val,  quickly. 

Ethan  turned  with  a  sudden  light  in  his  face. 

"  Do  you  mean  you  really  don't  mind  ?" 

"  Not — not  if  you  take  me." 

He  looked  into  her  eyes  and  then  across  the  bay.  It  was 
some  time  before  he  spoke  : 

"Sam  to  the  contrary,  I'm  not  §ure  but  what  the  worst 
is  to  come." 

She  shook  her  head. 
"  '  The  worst '  is  over." 

521 


THE    OPEN    QUESTION" 

"  Do  you  see  that  bank  of  cloud  ?" 

"It  will  make  a  fine  sunset," she  answered.  While  Sam 
was  getting  the  boat  ready :  "  He  must  stay  behind,"  she 
said,  very  low. 

Ethan  seemed  about  to  give  the  order,  but  it  stuck  in 
his  throat. 

"  Shall  I  tell  him  ?"  she  asked. 

Still  no  answer. 

«  Sa— "  she  called. 

"We  can  go  alone  another  day, "Ethan  interrupted,  hur 
riedly. 

She  shook  her  head. 

"When  that  other  day  comes  I  may  not  be  able.'" 

"'What  should  prevent  you  ?" 

"Something  stronger  than  I — or  you.'"  As  he  looked 
at  her  :  "I  may  come  to  feel  too  much  that  sense  you  said 
I  lacked.  Quick,  quick  !  Make  him  hurry  :  it's  late.  It 
might  come  to  seem  too  late." 

"Late.  Do  you  realize  it's  not  four  weeks  since  the  ball  ? 
You  who  wanted  to  go  to  China  and  Persia,  and  God  knows 
where !" 

"Well,  I  am  going — God  knows  where."  She  turned 
away  her  head. 

Sam  was  waiting  to  hand  her  in. 

"  No,  Ethan,  you,"  she  whispered.  But  she  looked  back 
when  she  was  in  the  boat,  and  smiled  at  the  old  sailor. 

"  You  needn't  come  this  time,"  she  said,  as  he  was  pre 
paring  to  follow  Ethan.  "  I  can  manage  the  tiller." 

Sam's  doubtful  looks  vanished  as  he  observed  the  lady's 
air  of  custom. 

"  W^here  shall  we  go  ?"  said  Ethan. 

"  I  think  I'll  steer  for  the  sunset."  she  answered,  in  the 
same  level  voice. 

He  paused  with  the  sheet  in  his  hand. 

"  That  would  bring  us —  He  looked  out  across  the 
water,  far  across  it,  beyond  it,  till  his  cloudy  eyes  found  the 
cloud-hung  entrance  to  the  open  sea. 

*'  It  will  bring  us  out  at  the  Golden  Gate,"  she  said. 

522 


U.C.  BERKELEY  LIBRARIES 


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